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Somebody had worked it out that with a thousand guns each firing a shell a minute, shells would be exploding along the line at sixteen per second. In the event they came down detonating in front of our eyes with the rapidity of an ongoing non-stop machine gun. It just took your breath away to see the ground boiling and writhing with an unspeakable din. This barrage went on for 15 minutes. I did not find it frightening but very sobering for there was hardly a man in our ranks that had not had a chance to take a welcoming appetiser for the trials that lay ahead.
I felt elevated and while we waited for the fifteen minutes of torrential explosions to do their work, in the brilliant light of the full moon, Montgomery’s Moon, I called it later, I stared into the distance on my left and right observing the unending row of soldiers. South Africans to the left and right and beyond that out of sight but also trained and ready for the job, ANZACS, Scots, Hindus and Moslems, Poles and Free French. Surely this was the epitome of democracy and it stirred me deeply. On the stroke of 11pm the barrage began to creep, a steam roller replacing the monsoon of static bombardment. Then the long, miles long, line of allied infantry moved forward.
Now you had to have your wits about you. Soon, with your eyes studying the ground for mines and both eyes and ears taking in the positions of the men next to you, Shorty Carneson on the left and Roy McCartney on the right, you became aware of trip-wires everywhere. Worst of all, a gun was firing short and shells were landing amongst us. When the missile came close, amidst the hullabaloo, it gave off its own note and you flattened. My face “kissed the deck” several times and it was then I became aware of nasty three point prongs sticking up out of the earth and I was grateful for the Ritson patrol’s warnings of the previous night. Messages came down the long line to withdraw 50 yards to give the creeping barrage the chance to get ahead of us instead of amongst us. Then the high point of the ridge loomed. In the misty grey of smoke, cordite and moonlight the knobs of enemy groundworks took shape. The grenadiers were distinguishable coming out of their dugouts and jumping into their weapon pits. I flung myself into a shell hole and switched the Bren from single shots to automatic and engaged the machine gun nests.
The next moment Shorty Carneson rushed up. A piece of shrapnel had hit him in the jaw. He was wide-eyed and scared stiff. I used a handkerchief or piece of two-by-four to staunch the blood flow, told him to take a pull at his side bottle, grabbed some Bren magazines from his wobbling pouch and sent him on his way. I jumped back into the shell hole and fired the magazines taken from Shorty. Machine gun fire came back in reply. Another rush forward and we began to overrun enemy pillboxes. Few prisoners were taken. Occupying the main objective delighted everyone and the memories of the Gazala fiasco deadened. It was dangerous to leave gunpits and dugouts uncleared and cleaning them up was easiest by dropping a grenade in or using a pistol. But there was a rogue gun still firing short, right on top of us, and I took cover in a 25-pounder shell hole. I had just raised myself to observe when there was a huge bang behind me. It was as if something nasty, jagged and burning tore up my back and knocked my tin hat off. I was dazed for several seconds; and feeling the back of my bared head my fingers sank into the huge hot mouth of a five inch gaping wound. There was worse. My right arm was paralysed and the fingers of my left could only trace the top end of a second, much larger, broad wound that had in fact removed most of the muscle from my shoulder blade.
I was now lying in a welter of blood, a smashed Bren gun sprawling on its side and its magazines spilling out from torn webbing pouches. From the right McCartney shouted “Are you all right?” He approached shocked at my state and above the roar I answered “No! I’m hurt. I’m useless” I nodded at the Bren gun and said “Take it” . McCartney shouted something to the effect the gun was shattered, took a look at my back-wound again and shouted “I’ll get a stretcher-bearer, stay here.”
I staggered to my feet looking for my tin hat. It was ten feet away, holed. As I did so in the moonlight I saw a movement to my left. The chaos of my thoughts suggested it was just the moonlight acting on a piece of scrub but it came closer and it was no stretcher-bearer. I tore my .45 revolver out with my left hand and shot at it. Only a few feet away it whimpered, threw up its arms and fell flat. I put another shot into it and sank back into the shell hole. Exhausted, I began to feel very cold and soon the stretcher-bearer arrived. He had already opened up a large shell-dressing. He was a black man and his English was poor and he showed his concern not by words so much as by clucking, comforting and mothering noises as he struggled with the awkward task of staunching the blood and applying a dressing to the massive wound. Then he did the head wound and kept repeating the word “solly, solly’ as he bandaged. I began to feel less isolated and asked him what part of South Africa he came from. It could have been Basutoland or Swaziland or even Zululand. He got me to my feet and as he did so Ernie Coleman from H.Q. approached and took me over and the stretcher-bearer went on up the hill to treat others.

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