Big send-off for war hero

A D-Day sailor will get a hero’s funeral after a Facebook appeal for mourners.

Sydney Walsh, 97, who died in June, crewed a tank landing craft in the 1944 Normandy landings.

The post inviting forces personnel to his funeral was viewed 80,000 times.

It drew offers for pall bearers, a helicopter fly-by and a motorbike escort for the service in Yeovil, Somerset, today. Undertaker Stuart Foster said Sydney, of nearby Martock, was “a truly heroic gentleman”.