大象传媒

It was about this time that I had a bad experience of having to follow an order that I knew to be pointless. It has haunted me ever since. I had been ordered to take my platoon to clear some woods and farm buildings. I tried to argue that it was a pointless exercise as we had already cleared that particular area. I had sent six guys forward up an avenue of trees and was just organising another squad when the tank, which was covering our advance, loosed off an air burst. The tank, it was sign written 鈥淐ock`O the North鈥�, when covering an advance always had its gun loaded and ready to fire over our heads. It was a total accident but the tank commander slipped on the firing mechanism and fired a premature round.
The shell was an airburst and unfortunately it hit the trees and caught the six guys who were about twenty yards away from me. The blast from the explosion singed my hair, and what turned out to be part of a young boy鈥檚 head, hit me in the face.

When I got to my boys, three were dead and three had been terribly maimed. One had all his buttocks shot away, another had an arm and his shoulder missing, the third seemed to be bleeding from every part of his body. I can still picture the young lad to this day. He was only eighteen years of age, Ginger haired, I believe he came from Glasgow. The wounded were screaming, screaming at me not to leave them. 鈥淪arge`, don鈥檛 leave me, Sarge`鈥�. I was trying to reassure them, to calm them. I told them I would not leave them and administered the syrettes of morphine that I always carried round my neck. I wanted to cry but knew that I must not let them see that I was scared for them. I knew there was no hope for any of them, as I watched their colour turn to grey. I ordered the carrier forward and we took a door off the nearest building to act as a stretcher on top of the carrier. I got them to an aid station but one had died before we got there and the other two died shortly after. It was an utter waste of life. I still, after more than fifty years hear their screams and see their faces, faces of death. 鈥淪arge`, don鈥檛 leave me Sarge`鈥�. When I was on my own, later that night, I shed my tears; I sobbed uncontrollably for a while.
I have re-lived this scene, over and over, in my nightmares for the past nearly sixty years. Will it never end?

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