PETER JACKSON

It's a long way from Maesteg to Mametz Wood, from a mining community in the Llynfi Valley to a place in Picardy forever entrenched in the slaughter of the Somme. David ‘Dai’ Watts travelled from one to the other in the name of King and Country, his journey made that much longer by a detour to Southampton where he caught a boat, not a luxury liner for a cruise around the Mediterranean but a troopship bound for the Western Front.
A corporal in the 7th Battalion of the Shropshire Light Infantry, Watts had made a name for himself as an irresistible force in a Wales pack still reve...