Hear the bits of bark and everything come down on top of you, and to see the clouds of dust around the top of your slit trench as the bullets go round. To say that I was scared would be an understatement. And here's a German paratrooper above me with a machine gun. So I 'ups the hands' alright, very smartly. He had a boil on his arm.
All officers have a pistol.
He just went back into the slit trench. He didn't die straight away. We did our best for him, but no, it was fatal. They had a big Red Cross flag, the Germans had spread this out. All our unit were told to sit around it, with our hands on our heads.