From Hero to Coward

Well, I'll tell you one thing right off the bat. One day you could be a hero, a real brave hero. The next day you could be a coward. It came just like that. You'd run when you shouldn't run. Or you'd do something brave that you never dreamt you would do. There is no definite answer to that. I found that.

Interviewer: What does it take to turn a person from one to the other in the space of a day? How does that happen?

It has all to do with the fear of your own life. You know. If it is black at night and people are coming towards you with their guns like this and your just standing beside your armoured car, cause you're the only one on sentry duty, what the hell do you do? Sometimes you might run around to get to the other side of the car. Another time you might just go up and blast at ‘em. It's very, very difficult to say. I found, and you'll find this in my book on a number of occasions, that I tried all my time in the army to save lives and not destroy lives and that included the enemy as well. I took four men, including a sergeant major, Germans, prisoner on my own because I could speak a little German and I fooled them. And using this little bit of German I came up close enough they saw, I was in the top of an armoured car, they saw my helmet and recognized it and they dropped their weapons. Now I could have, I had a sub-machine gun, I could have wounded or killed all of them, but my whole being said no and you might say well that was brave. Well I didn't think it to be brave, I just took them in.