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field over there and come back along one of those
hedges. 'No' said the Captain, "I don't think you have got
the idea- I want you to go down the road into the village
to see what is going on." This seemed a little like being told
to go ahead so that he could watch from which side I would be
hit. However there seemed to be no choice. I walked down the
road, finger on the trigger of my tommy gun, and since I was rather
visible, I thought I might as well shout in German: "come out!
give yourselves up! You are completely surrounded!" and
similar sound advice. I was approaching a road junction
when a German suddenly popped up from behind a low
wall, firing some automatice weapon. As he came up, I went
down on one knee, and we both fired. My gun fired one round
and jammed! Luckily he didn't know that - so he was
taking cover again. He came up a few more times, but
missed each time. In the meantime, I tried to get my
gun going - by re-cocking, shaking - but it was no use.
Finally, with great difficulties, I took my eyes off the low wall where
he kept bobbing up and down, and looked at my gun; there
were several rounds crumpled up in the breach! I ripped them
out, cocked my gun, flicked up the sights and set them, and
aimed from the shoulder, carefully. I figured he could not
keep on missing me - there was no cover, no ditch, the grass
verge I was on had pretty short grass. Next time I was going to
hit my target, no matter what: But it never came to that; My
captain apparently had seen what he wanted to see- and ordered
the troop to fix bayonets and charge! First I saw a tall corporal
from the Grenadier Guards (commandos are volunteers from all units)
firing a brengun from the shoulder, which isn't in the book.
In an assault the bren may be fired from the hip, the
book says. But from the shoulder - you would have to
have quite a reach, and quite a grip. He sprayed the
wall - suddenly wheeled to his left and fired a whole
magazine practically at his feet. When I followed (I took a
little while to pick myself up!) I saw that there were two
machine guns just around a corner in the hedge along the road,
a man lying behind each. Both were wounded, one unfit
for interrogation. The other one was a young kid of maybe 17 from
Styria in Austria. He claimed they had never fired (they hadn't, at me,
as far as I could see) They were too far back from the road anyway.
"The others" he said, when I showed him their half-empty M.G. belt "they
ran! The Feldwebel said stay here and we did and he ran away.
My bread-bag is hurting me - it rubs against my wound. When are you
going to evacuate us?" Someone was standing behind me. "How
do you say 'I am sorry' in German?" It was my rescuer, the
big Guards Corporal. "Es tut mir leid," I said, or "Verzeihung." "Verzeihung"
he tried to say to the two Germans - "es tut mir leid". I think it
was the following day that they got him, in a charge. He was doing
the 'from the shoulder' stunt again, the one that isn't in the book.