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In early 1942 the Germans started getting over our troops, and started pushing us back: they thought they’d won the war I think. But luckily enough, they were running out of supplies on their route and our aircraft were harassing them and beating them up. Anyway we got pushed back and back, and on the way back to El Alamein where we held the line eventually, and one engagement we had with the Germans I got shot in the knee and my friend got killed. I can’t remember his name.

It happened because in the artillery, we were just having a duel with the Germans: they were firing at us and we were firing at them — general mayhem really. I was in pretty bad pain: the shot went right into my knee. And my friend got it in the heart and dropped dead instantly. We had a field hospital behind us, travelling with us actually, and they put me in a small van and took me down to the hospital, then put me in an ambulance and took me down to Brook Hospital. They operated overnight and the next day I was sent down to Cairo, to the 127 General Hospital, until they got a boat to send me back to South Africa, where I stayed for a year recovering. I eventually got home and found out that the earlier regiment I was in had got sent to Crete and Greece and got wiped out there. So I had a lucky escape; I only got wounded. I’ve still got the trouble now, I walk with a stick and am waiting at the moment for a knee replacement. Anyway, I was finished at the time —not fit for military service. My friend, I’d only known him in the army but had known him a long time: he was an ex-miner. After the war, there was a notice in one of the papers I found from his family, wanting to know what had happened to him. But they never got in touch with me so I wasn’t able to tell them what happened to him. If I met them now, I’d tell them he was killed instantly which was better than him suffering — the shrapnel hit him in the heart and he was killed instantly.

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