- Contributed by听
- VideoNation
- People in story:听
- Sam Hack
- Location of story:听
- Germany
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A5498625
- Contributed on:听
- 02 September 2005
(This story has been submitted to the People's War website through the 大象传媒 East Video Nation project on behalf of Sam Hack and has been added to the site with his permission).
Sam's best friend Philip was killed on the last day of WW2 and he still finds it emotional to talk about him.
SAM'S STORY IN HIS WORDS.
It was about the last day of the War and we were right up on the River Elbe and we were going through the wood clearing in Germany, and in Germany the trees are very high about 100 feet to 150 feet to 190 foot high. And we started going through and we were
hit with a lot of shrapnel, bombs and shrapnel. So we all dived for cover and I dived for the tree and stood beside the tree and my friend Phillip he shot on the ground about 20 yards from me, everyone else scattered all over the place.
Well what happened was we found out all this shrapnel we were getting and all these explosions was our own artillery - hitting the top of the trees and we were getting the shrapnel down on us. Once we found out they radioed through and stopped the artillery saying our troops were trapped, and they stopped. What we did they said 鈥 鈥渞ight oo we鈥檒l push on鈥. So I went to go forward and Philip still lay on the floor so I turned round and said come on Philip. I went over to him and he was dead. I rolled him over. He had died and no one knew how he got killed so I looked as his pack, as he still had it on and I see a hole as big as my thumb nail. I followed it through, and it went straight through his body and into his heart and that鈥檚 what killed him. It was our own artillery that done that 鈥 last day I thought 鈥 last day and he got killed!
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