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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Don and Betty Tempest of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Maurice Dunn and added to the site with his permission.

Looking back you have to see the funny sides of things that happened in the war. God knows there was plenty of serious stuff going on.

I was in the Army, The Light Infantry, up to me armpits. In an incident I remember, I made a complete fool of myself. We were serving in Italy, and one night in 1943, we were designated to go on a reconnaissance patrol, and Officer and six men, me being one of the men. It was nighttime and we were creeping about in No-man’s land in the dark. After a few hours we came upon some German positions, we were under strict orders not to get into a fight, unless it was in self-defence. We just noted the positions and retreated back to our own lines.

Our Commander decided, on the strength of the information we had gathered, we would attack on the following night. Yours truly, having been on the patrol the night before and having already covered the ground, was at the front. I was the ‘Pike-man’.
Part of the route took us down a sunken road that had a ten-foot high edge on either side. This was an ideal spot for the Germans to get up there and throw Hand Grenades down on us. So I had to get on top of the edge on one side, and my mate ‘Charlie’, (Who had been a Desert Rat) was on the other side. It was pitch black as we made out way along on our hands and knees, but I forgot that the edge took a sharp left turn, I went straight ahead and went head over heels down the ten-foot drop. You can imagine the racket I made. The Officer wasn’t a bit pleased. He whispered, ‘What’s up?’ I whispered back, ‘I’ve just fallen off the top of the B….y edge and I’m not going back up there again.’

We, being the lead Platoon just went so far, we were what they call the ‘Bridge Head’. The rest of the unit just went straight through and delivered the attack. We joined them next morning.

That was one of the things that stick in my mind, I know it doesn’t sound like much, but if the Germans had heard all the noise I made it would have been curtains for all of us. You look back on these things and think, ‘Silly Sod!’

Another time I was in a Reserved Company, which meant we weren’t on the Front Line. With me was a mate, a very good mate, we looked out for each other. One time we had to provide a carrying party to take some rations up to the Forward Company and me and my mate Johnny, stupidly volunteered.

It was nighttime and as we got near the Front Line, Johnny was just in front of me, and ‘C’ Company where we were taking the rations, never challenged us, they just opened fire. Johnny was hit, I don’t know if the bullet hit his hand and passed through his thigh or the other way round, but I new I had to get him to the Regimental Aid Post pretty quick. He had passed out by now and we were in an area where you could only move about at night, and the R.A. Post was some way off. Despite the rain, mist and fog and being hopelessly lost, I think Divine Providence must have been at work, because we did arrive, eventually at the R.A. Post, but unfortunately Johnny died of his wounds. I went back to my Slit Trench as miserable as sin because I had lost my best mate.

The next day they asked for volunteers to take up a position in a house in the front of our own lines, and observe the German Artillery flashes and take compass bearings of them. So I volunteered. We had to get into this house before daylight and come out after dark. When we got into the house we found, on the ground floor some German equipment, but no Germans, thank God. We went upstairs and remained silent, which was a necessity. We did what we had to do during the day, but during the afternoon some Germans came up to the house. Now it had been agreed between us that if the Germans did find us in the house we would surrender. We didn’t want to make a fight of it. Luckily for us they didn’t come upstairs. Shortly after the German went back out. Divine Providence again.

I got wounded in Italy on the 28th. September 1944. I stood on a Land Mine and was blown up. One leg was very seriously injured, and the other had a compound fracture of the Tibia and Tibia. There were two of us who had been wounded. We were strapped on stretchers and put on a Jeep. They pumped us full of Morphine and we were taken to a Field Surgical Unit, where they amputated the badly injured leg and tidied up the other one. They must have made a hell of a good job of it, because it has never broken down after all this time.

You know what? Some years ago, I had to put in for a review of my Pension, and to do that you had to have some signed statements from the Ministry of Defence relative to my injuries and treatment etc. I have still have those documents at home and the Medical Staff had put down the first words I spoke when I came out of the anaesthetic after my amputation. The nurse asked me how I felt and I said, ‘Rough’. But not only that, there were notes of my temperature, blood pressure and what blood they had given me. Super efficient! It made me think of the Falklands, after the Belgrano was sunk, they couldn’t even find any records of who had sunk it. But after all those years I still have the documents about my stay in the Field Surgical Unit. (FSU)

They transferred me from the FSU to a hospital in Naples about the end of December in 1944. I was then put on a Hospital ship and brought back to England and went to a hospital in Blackburn, they eventually moved me to nearer home, on the outskirts of Newcastle-on-Tyne, where they got me fit to go back to civilian life. I was in the Newcastle hospital for nine months.

In the hospital there was a ‘Bogey’ Stove that burnt coke. The floorboards were ‘bumped’ (Cleaned) every day. We had no MSA, no Bed Sores, because our Backsides were rubbed twice a day, every day. Nor did we have any Antibiotics.

I only once went back to the cemetery in Casino, where my mate Johnny is, and it was very emotional. I tell people that they wee not just names on those Crosses, but faces of our Comrades who died. I was one of the lucky ones who came back home.

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