“Mine Dismantling” Part 3 of 3

Peculiar, the, the weird part of all this was, of course, this was all observed by the Home Fleet. I'm thinking, the CNC and actually the, the mine ultimately turned out to be, turned out to be safe but of course there was no, there was no way of knowing that. Anyway for that I was recommended for the George Medal. And then some, sometime after that I was out with my torpedo gunner's mate, we had so many mines and it was getting, getting dark and there was a mine ashore on the island of Flotta and reported. And so we went to, we went to, to deal with this and it was sunset and the, the tide was just beginning to flood and so we, we walked toward the mine, and we were about 40 yards away I suppose, but the, the, the land went down like that and I, I was going to secure it but my, my torpedo gunner's mate, a marvellous person, said, "Sir, I don't think we should do that, it's too late." And so just as we turned around to go, the mine blew up and blew us to flat to the ground and all this had been watched by the, by a local signal station who sent down an ambulance and of course, the ambulance, when the ambulance got there they could find nothing, nothing at all. Meanwhile, we'd walked across to the signal station to tell them that we were okay.