He Died Just Like That

We had one difficult spot, when we were on the way up to Groningen, northwestern Holland. I keep saying northern, but it’s western. We had a new CO who had come from the Italian campaign. The Italian campaign was over just after Christmas, I think, and some of them came as reinforcements. But we had this officer who came and he was like a Wild West man, you know. He said, “Come on, we’re gonna go!” and he didn’t pay any attention to the Brigadier’s official plan, you know. The enemy are in there and he got me and my … stupidly I went, with my staff and we went along into the bushes and gee, we were really beaten up badly. We were in a shed, and a company, a platoon commander was standing beside me and he got shot in the neck. He picked the bullet out of his mouth. But it had taken his carotid artery, you know, and he just died like that. Impressive. There were a hell of a lot of casualties there. We all put on white bands and grabbed stretchers and anything we could, or casualties over our shoulders and ran out. It was something else. This guy, the Padre, arranged through a roundabout way to get this fellow removed right away, because he was … I don’t know what he was thinking about.