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On July 5th 1944, as a reconnaissance group we were in close contact with Germans retreating down side roads. It was the day of my own grievous calamity. Our troop of four tanks was creeping down a road along a very steep mountainside and we knew that somewhere ahead a German 88mm would be hiding waiting for us to reach a position, which the enemy would, in retreat, have noted down accurately in terms of its range. To make our survival more likely, I had volunteered to accompany the troop officer, Lieutenant Bunny Evans walking ahead of the tanks to draw fire. It was clearly understood in the regiment, an unwritten regimental law, that whilst one member of the tank crew was outside the tank, the hatches in the turret would never be closed. This would allow anyone trapped outside by gunfire to take cover in his own tank. The officer and myself both outside our tanks reached a position, which was obviously in range of the enemy, and shells began to land all around it. We were creeping forward with our tanks about thirty yards behind us. We reached a point where the Germans had the range accurately. Their machine guns began to rattle and bullets snaked into the rocky hillside next to us. The officer shouted to me to get into my tank and jumped into his Honey, which was the closest. I started to run for the next tank, my one, a Sherman and the German machine gun followed me tearing up the dirt road. Hard smacks on my right leg told me I had been hit. Reaching the Sherman I struggled up on to its left side. At that very moment, three feet away, a high explosive shell hit the rations box on the rear of the turret and it splayed open. I took the blast and shrapnel of the shell in the upper half of my body. I reached for the turret opening and to my horror found the hatch down, closed. I pounded on the closed hatch and became aware that there was a large hole in my chest that was pouring blood and a ghastly sucking noise as air rushed directly into its cavity. Machine gun fire and mortars lambasted the turret. With my remaining strength I kept pounding the top of the hatch. Bell had done the unforgivable. His cowardice had caught up with me. In fear of his life and of shells dropping on the troop and against the strictest regimental rules he had battened down with me outside on the superstructure unprotected. By then the tanks were reversing out of the ambush and the hatch opened. Whether he had heard my despairing poundings or was opening to guide driver Jack Ayles’ reversing I never knew. He withdrew into the turret interior and with my last fragments of consciousness I was able to pull myself into the turret gangway and fall down on to the floor of the tank.
The whole troop was being raked by shell fire which was terrifying enough for our own tank crew, but my sudden appearance, ashen and bloodied, gasping for air through a gaping wound in the chest and a rattling noise stemming from my windpipe scared the living daylights out of them. Added to this was the phenomenon of the rotating turret as the tank began to back out of the ambush and my shocking personification of Armageddon framed on-and-off in the window of the rotating turret grid. The crew told me later that I lay there with eyes closed speaking incoherently to them. That was not quite my experience. Lying there, I felt this strange force take me over and still enabled me to see with eyes shut. I was fascinated by the eyes of each of the crew, which were goggling almost out of their sockets at me as the turret rotated. Despite the pain, I felt an overwhelming compassion for them, for their fear of death. Yet never once did I believe I was about to die.

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