Transcript
Suddenly one night they called me up and they said 'We've got a job for you. You are to go out on patrol with the pioneer patrol, the pioneer platoon, commanded by Captain Greville. He's taking a party out to do line repairs.' Fence repairs and so forth.
So, I went out with them but once we got out into the valley, communication was non-existent, we just couldn't get through. So, I came very close to killing two of our own men that night because the captain said to me 'Well if your sets not much good would you sit here and keep the flank.'
He said 'That direction is the enemy. Anything coming from there is the enemy.' He said, 'You'll hear noises behind you, that's the boys carrying gear up and down.'
I said, 'Fair enough'.
Sometime later there was movement ahead of me and out of the gloom comes one figure then another one appeared behind him and I thought 'Oh, what have we got here?' I've got my Owen gun, got to remove the safety slide, took the first pressure and thought 'How many more are there?'
There was no more, there was only two and I thought I could drop these two as easy as anything and I'm just about to pull this trigger for the second pressure and a voice says, 'Where the bloody Hell are we?'
So, I said 'Boo'. Well these two nearly died of fright.
They said, 'Where are you?' I said, 'Straight ahead of you, so take a pace to your right, walk straight ahead and keep going straight ahead and you will reach the fence.'
And they went past me and still didn't see me because I was well down in the bushes. But I was shaking like a leaf afterwards because I came so close to shooting them.
