(This is an extract of 400 words out of the 3454 words in the full version of "George Glover")

.....Not long afterwards not very far away from Aradura hill , there was a village called Viswema that we attacked and took from the Japanese. After we took the village we dug-in on the outside of the village. You never dug-in inside the village, because of course the enemy would shell you. They didn't know quite where you were on the outside when you dug-in.
Well, we got ourselves dug-in, then the mortar bombs started landing, I new they were Japanese because they were too bleedin' close for one thing. George was wondering around in the open, I shouted to him to get under cover. "What's the bloody hell's up with ya? They're our own trench mortars," he replied.
Well that often happened if the Japanese were advancing, our own artillery or mortars would land shells just in front of us, which in that case wouldn't have been very far from where we were. Sometimes when you were advancing your own artillery would fire shells to land about fifty yards in front to keep the enemies heads down, while you advanced a bit further. But this wasn't the case here. Common bloody sense told me it wasn't the case, because in the first place we knew of no attack, in the second they were too bloody close. So I shouted to George. Would you believe it, he was walking around as if he was on a bleedin' Sunday afternoon stroll. Another soldier that I didn't notice at first shouted to him, "Hey George you silly bugger you've been hit." I thought that this other soldier shouted that to get George to take cover, but when I looked again I saw the blood trickling down his groin. I could see it, we used to wear green drill dress, I could see the blood running down his thigh from his groin. So I backed the other soldier up then. "George you silly sod you've been hit, get to the regimental aid post," I shouted.  So he then looked down and was convinced, but there was no sign of him flapping or panicking. He just looked down, saw the blood and said, "Where's the regimental aid post?"  He walked over in that direction. He'd no sooner arrived then the aid post was plastered with mortar bombs. So George got another packet in his knees.
When the battle was over, after Kohima. I was given a....

©  RICHARD PATTERSON 2001