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This story was gathered, written and submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Peoples War by Brian Morgan

My friend Florrie, from Dublin, and I were in the married quarters alone. It was what we called a ‘soft Irish day’. The rain was coming down solidly, it was overcast but it was warm. My friend Florrie suggested that we should go out for a swim in the sea and so we went down to the beach. There was a work mans hut on the beach where we put our swimming gear on and went out into the water. We were in the water for about twenty minutes when I turned towards the beach and suddenly seen a red flag. Now opposite our house there were sand dunes and you had to go down to the beach along a sandy path, it was at the end of this path where the red flag was. So I shouted to Florrie ‘the flags up’ when I realised that this was being used for a ‘mortar’ range. So we got out of the water and ran like ‘fury’ to the hut and got dressed, didn’t dry ourselves, and came out shouting our ‘heads off’. From the sand dunes a head appeared, it was a Staff Sergeant and he looked rather aghast. ‘Where the hell were you’ he shouted , so I pointed over my shoulder and as I got nearer to him I said ‘why the hell didn’t you check the sea’ as we wore bathing caps in those days, and even if he had just looked out he would have seen the different coloured hats as we went under and came out of the water

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