A Live Grenade Thrown His Way

I don’t know what, what the average person thinks of, but war isn’t like you, you might think that you are standing up there with a gun and another guy is over there with a gun. It doesn’t work like that. Most of the damage is done by either mortars or artillery or land mines and as an infantry man sometimes, yeah sometimes you will run into a, a fight, you know what I mean, a fire fight, but it’s not too often. I seen myself one day, I had just, I was down beside this, the truck, the 1600 weight with a Bren gun, and a potato masher came over and landed that far from me and it didn’t go off. A potato masher is a grenade. It didn’t go off. Shortly after that the Corporal, Rogers called me, you know, well I got up when the potato masher landed, I got up and I ran, but it didn’t go off. And he called me and behind this embankment was a whole lot of German in there and he called me and I can still remember, I can still remember him hollering out “Come out with the hände hoch, come out with the hände hoch” And I was there with the Bren gun and this German guy came out, with his eye was just about hanging out you know and in the heat of the action, I mean it wasn’t the humane thing to do, but I just gave him a push you know, but that’s the way, that’s the way you are. It’s survival of the fittest, you know. I’m looking after number one.