When Busby Babes were Shropshire Army boys - with pictures and video

Two former friends today remember them.

It was a tackle he wasn't going to forget in a hurry. When Derek Thorpe's army football team took on their neighbouring regiment, his sergeant-major warned their opponents had one or two tasty players in their side.

Early in the game, the nippy young winger found himself dispossessed by a strapping defender playing for the other side, and decided to pay him back.

"He tackled me early on, and I thought 'I'll get have you next time'," recalls Derek, now 81.

"I didn't half know about, I landed about two yards further up the pitch than I did the first time."

The player was Duncan Edwards. By the time he turned out for the RAOB team, based in Nesscliffe, near Shrewsbury, he already had three England caps under his belt, and Derek remembers being in awe of the power, skill and speed of the great man.

"Him and Bobby Charlton were both in the same team, and they really stood out," he says.

"I thought Duncan Edwards was better than Bobby Charlton, and I later read that Bobby Charlton also thought he was."

While Charlton would go on to taste World Cup success and enjoy a long and glittering career, Edwards' life would tragically be cut short in the Munich Air Crash.

It is 60 years since the disaster which tore apart Matt Busby's legendary "Busby Babes" Manchester United team which had blazed a trail for English football in the newly formed UEFA Cup.

The side had just secured a place in the semi-final of the new European cup competition, their 3-3 draw against Red Star Belgrade enough to secure them a place in the final four having beaten the Yugoslav side 2-1 at Old Trafford. On February 6, the chartered British European Airways plane had stopped in Germany to refuel, and crashed as it attempted to take off for its final leg of the journey.

Of the 44 people on board, 23 were killed. Charlton, who received cuts to the head, was one of the survivors. Edwards was one of eight members of the Manchester United team who died from injuries sustained during the crash.

"It knocked me about a bit when I heard about that," says Derek, who lives in Shrewsbury.

"They were such great lads. Duncan was from Dudley, and I was from Dawley, so the lingo was pretty similar.

"After he had knocked me flying with his tackle, he came over to me, and said 'you all right, kid?'"

The crash happened as the plane prepared to take off just after 3pm. Two previous take-off attempts were aborted due to a fault with the plane, which caused it to accelerate erratically.

As the passengers were sent to the airport lounge, it began to snow, and Edwards sent a telegram to his landlady in Manchester telling saying he was unlikely to be back that night.

However, the plane's captain, James Thain, was eager to keep up with the schedule, and suggested the problem could be overcome if the plane accelerated more gently along the runway.

He calculated that the runway, which was 1.2 miles long, would still give it time to reach take-off speed. Some of the players, including Edwards, felt nervous and moved to the back of the plane where they thought they would be safer. At the third take-off attempt, Thain became aware that the plane was skidding on the snow, and failed to reach the required speed. Instead it crashed, first into the perimeter fence on the airfield, and then a house across the road from the airport. Part of the plane's tail was torn off before the left side of the cockpit hit a tree. The right side of the fuselage hit a wooden hut, inside which was a truck filled with tyres and fuel, which exploded.

Ironically, Edwards' decision to sit at the back of the plane might have cost him his life, as all the passengers who switched seats died.

Derek, who was a regular soldier with the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry at Copthorne Barracks, says he would regularly play against the Manchester United stars during their National Service in the mid-1950s.

"Because they were just up the road from us, we would play each other a lot," he says. But Derek recalls the games were often one-sided affairs, with the KSLI lads beating the Nesscliffe team on just one occasion.

"They were a cut above the rest," he says.

"They had a lot of players from different clubs, there was a player from Everton, and another one from Blackpool."

Also in that team was Brian Griffiths who played at full back for Shrewsbury Town.

Like many professional footballers from the Midlands and north-west, he was posted to Nesscliffe for his National Service so he could continue to play for his club.

“Duncan was already there," says Brian, who is 83 and also lives in Shrewsbury.

"He was a PTI, a physical training instructor. He was a corporal. We had a good old natter and he explained everything to us.

“I knew him as Dunc. He was a smashing lad. He was big, and so gentle, and yet when he said something, you automatically did it. He was not aggressive, and his football capabilities were just unbelievable.

“There was an army captain who helped out with the training. I can’t remember his name, but Easterby rings a bell.”

Soon after Brian started at Nesscliffe, a teenage Charlton arrived at the depot too, and he and Brian were both in the same platoon – 3 Platoon – and shared the same platoon billet. A picture on Brian's wall shows him training with the Manchester United players on the racecourse at Monkmoor.

"We would do the normal training the soldiers did – marching, ammunition and so on – and then after that the footballers would do the football training. We were all mates and it was a good atmosphere,” says Brian.

He saw at first hand how Edwards, who played wing half, brought out the best in the young Bobby Charlton, who played at inside forward or centre forward.

“Bobby does owe Dunc quite a lot. Over the time I knew him he improved to A1.”

Charlton was, he recalls, “bloody fast” but Bobby admits in his autobiography that his tackling was a weakness.

“He did not use his body, like a defender does. He was always looking to try and pass people, even if they had the ball. He had no aggression – we used to say to him: ‘Bloody get in!’”

Derek, who by coincidence later became a golf buddy of Brian's, recalls how the Busby Babes slotted in very easily to army life, and got on with all the other soldiers.

"They were great lads, they really were," says Derek.

"You could talk to them easily, it was just normal army chat.

"At one point I was injured, and I finished up in the medical centre at Nesscliffe, and I remember Duncan and Bobby Charlton coming to visit me."

Brian says Charlton and Edwards seemed to enjoy their Shropshire army days.

“They mucked in with everything and they never thought they were any higher than anybody else.

It was during his time a Nesscliffe that Charlton broke into the United first team, five days short of his 19th birthday on October 6, 1956. Frustrated at how military service was hindering his progress as the sports team, he found an ally in his company sergeant-major "Chalky" White.

“He was a great football fan, had a car and was eager to make a deal," Charlton recalled in his autobiography.

"You get the tickets, Bobby, and I’ll get you the leave passes and drive you up to Manchester whenever United have a home game in the European Cup,”

Edwards finished his National Service in 1957, but Charlton returned to Nesscliffe for another year.

Brian says he and his wife Iris kept in touch with Edwards's mother Sarah-Anne after the star's death.

"We kept in touch with Dunc’s mum at Dudley," he says.

"Iris and I went to see her after his death, along with my mum. She was very proud of him. We went to see the window in Dudley Church and look at his grave.”