THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE DANNY FERNLEY STORY — including a hug from Marilyn

Copyright Valerie Martin 2003

Daniel Fernley has led a colourful career and is a well-known Findon inhabitant.   I often see him walking the lanes — and he often stops when he's driving his car to the shops.

He was orphaned at the tender age of 3 weeks in 1924.  A few years later he attended a boarding school and this was when he first learned to play the violin and clarinet.  

It was during those schooldays that he stood in awe when he was presented with a prize by Haile Selassie, the then Emperor of Abyssinia (today's Ethiopia). 

Danny did not realise that the Emperor was to still be remembered many years later.  Haile Selassie came into the limelight for being overthrown by the Military junta called the 'Dergue', in Ethiopia. 

In 1936 he had to escape his country with his family when it was invaded by Mussolini's Fascist Italian forces.  By June of that year he was only four miles from Findon. 

He was on his way to Geneva to appeal to the League of Nations for help against Mussolini and left his family in nearby Worthing at the Warnes Hotel.   He didn't make much headway in his appeal and rejoined his family just south of Findon.

Many years later, on 5th November 2001, the remains of the Emperor Haile Selassie were claimed to be buried and there was an emotional and colourful ceremony held at the Trinity Cathedral in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.  It was the third time that a burial was being held for the former Ethiopian monarch.  In 1992 the skeleton of the emperor was said to have been dug up from behind a toilet.  Investigations revealed, however, that they were not those of the Emperor, as the bones were too tall to be that of the 5-foot 3 inches tall Selassie!

In 1938 at the age of 14 Danny Fernley was to be enlisted in the Navy and told he was to join the 1913 Devonport built H.M.S. Warspite at Malta.

However, Danny decided the Navy was not for him so he ran away to join the Army.  Perhaps this was just as well because HMS Warspite took part in many wartime adventures.   At the battle of Jutland she sustained fifteen hits and came  close to foundering.  She took part in the battle of Crete, where she sustained damage by a heavy bomb hit.  During the landings at Salerno, she was hit by a German glider bomb, and was towed to Gibraltar for temporary repairs and fully repaired at Rosyth in March 1944.  By June 1944 she was being deployed at Normandy with only three functioning main turrets and she also took part in the bombardment of Brest, Le Havre and Walcheren.  So perhaps Danny had a narrow escape from serving on her.  She was sold for scrap in early 1947, and during the voyage to the breakers she ran aground at Mounts Bay, and was broken up over the following five years. 

It was 1938 that Danny appeared at the Aldershot Tattoo where he played the unlikely part of a Dervish in a re-enactment depicting the Battle of Omdurman.  This depicted Kitchener leading a force of 8,200 British troops, 17,600 Sudanese and Egyptians up the Nile to capture Omdurman city in the Sudan in 1898.  With the British army pounding the oncoming force with howitzers and machine guns, the attack was short lived and after the battle 2,000 Dervishes lay dead in front of the British lines.

Early in the Second World War Danny escaped being sent to France because of his extreme youthfulness.  One of his first real jobs in the army was to help disarm shell-shocked British and Allied troops returning from Dunkirk.

Later his musical talents were recognized and he was sent to Winchester College to learn music.  His musical career was soon interrupted with postings firstly to Hove, when an invasion threatened, and then to York, London and King's Lynn.  After these postings he went back to Winchester where he met one of the American Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Nelson Bradley (1893-1981), who during World War II commanded the U.S. 12th Army Group in Europe.   Bradley is known for his memoirs of 1951 when he sharply criticised British Field Marshal Montgomery for misrepresentation of U.S. and British roles in the winter German offensive.

Towards the end of the war, Danny was with the 5th British Infantry Division traversing the Dutch countryside where many of the civilian population were living in starving conditions.  On into Germany, he saw many towns literally flattened to heaps of rubble.  With the war in Europe coming to an end, his Division was ordered to Japan in 1945.  After being anchored off Algiers for several days, the captain of the ship announced that Japan had surrendered following the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war, Danny became a musician with the Irish Guards and completed his musical training at Kneller Hall and Trinity College.  He performed at Buckingham Palace where he met and talked with the Queen and Prince Phillip and played at the celebrations for the 80th Birthday party of the somewhat stern and never smiling Queen Mary.

Later, Danny appeared in a number of films including the adventure war drama of The 49th Parallel with Eric Portman and Leslie Howard in 1957.  The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957 with Marilyn Monro..... I must add here that Danny tells me he received a hug from Marilyn.  He also appeared in the epic adventure, Bridge on the River Kwai with Alec Guiness in 1957.   Again in Zulu in 1964 with Michael Caine. The Ipcress File the following year with Michael Caine.  Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969 with Sir John Mills playing Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig .

It was after making this last film in Brighton that Danny and his wife moved to a bungalow in Cross Lane in Findon.  I met him as he often walked across Nepcote Green carrying his saw on his way to clearing scrub on the Cissbury Estate.  He always had some stories from the past to recount to me..... and I did say at the beginning that Danny had led a colourful career didn't I!

Continue if you would like to read about 1943 in The End of the Second World War in Findon.

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — was launched by Valerie Martin in January 1999 and will grow to be a historical record of life in Findon, West Sussex, U.K.