Realm of the Beast.

Capstan mouthed curses at Young, his cigarette stub waggling furiously in his mouth.
For a few brief seconds we all laughed together.
A moment shared.
The truth was you never really knew when your time was up and every minute we spent in those trenches -our time drew ever closer.

I was with these other soldiers - purely by chance.

I was originally on my way to Egypt on an intelligence mission (well, if you can call carrying false plans of attack, intelligence).
I was part of a disinformation campaign designed to keep Rommels’ forces guessing.
Things had gotten quite desperate for Montgomery’s Eighth army boys out in the deserts.
Unfortunately, the carrier plane I was on was shot down over southern France.
Not much passed the German Air-Force by!
Four of the fifteen-man crew lived, myself among that number.
But over the subsequent weeks we lost another two to German snipers.
That left myself, and a fellow from Bristol called Joseph McLain.
‘Jossy’ as he went by, was a good soldier and companion.
We took turns in keeping watch as the other slept.

All we could do was run and hide in the mountainous region known as Languedoc.
Late September found us near a town called L’Ariman.

The town was small affair, only a few hundred people lived there.
While scouting the area for food, we ran into a squad of Germans that caught us off guard.
We almost gate crashed their supper.
As you can imagine they weren’t over enamoured at our arrival.
I caught a bullet in the ribs which would have killed me for sure had it been another inch to my left. As it was, it gouged a six-inch strip out of my flank that bled for days.

Jossy however caught one in the throat.
All I could do was drag him over the low wall and down to the stream that we’d been following.
He was dead in seconds.
I hated myself for running but the Germans were peppering the ground around us with very aggressive gunfire.