Murray Willing - Shot by a sniper

Transcript

We were all lined up on the end of this old strip, across that. My captain was on the right side, Captain Eifold, and I was in the section on the left-hand side across from him and we had two tanks come up and they were in the middle. So righto, they're all settled down and we were in our sections and everything right across, and I had my eye on, I swear I could see the skipper because he was right on the right-hand side an so on.

And quietly waiting there waiting for time to move, everybody at once and I don't think anybody, and the Yanks hadn't done a thing about the other end of it, I'll give you that directly, anyway I see him put his hand up and as he put his hand up there, I wasn't aware that he fell and I wasn't aware that the sniper was strapped in the top of the thing. Fortunately, I saw him and as I saw him, I put that hand down like that and you see that thing there, that photo there, the bullet hit there and come out under my arm, you see, there's only a little mark there but it threw me backwards and fortunately there was a half hole there and I didn't move from there.

I was thrown back in shock and, of course, I started to spew blood and of course I was told never to drink water if you're bleeding like that, and it was as hot as hell and I lost my Tommy machine gun and everything else and I had to stop there because it was pretty slow moving and eventually after the sniper got me he got a couple of the others and you always knocked the heads of the section off because they were the ones that, the English army if anybody got knocked at the top they were in a mess. The silly Australians they all knew what you had to do, you just had to move one up, that was how we were trained. So, anyway, that part of it was alright.