Its odd that I never found out why they called him Captain, because I remember thinking that night we met, "Its a queer nickname for a fusilier."

I had recently joined my old battalion with a batch of re-enforcements the day before, and had been detailed this Saturday night to replace a sick member of the Battalion. The guard had already mounted, when with the make-up, I entered the guardroom at Thwaite Hall Cottingham, Hull just before Xmas in 1941.

When I entered the guardroom it must have been late on, because the off duty men were asleep. The guard commander said, "You're on the ten-twelve-four-six stag with Captain. "Captain," I said. Yes thats him in the far corner. I looked across the group of bodies on the floor, I saw a huddled form completley covered by an army blanket.

There wasn't much room to kip down so until ten o'clock I passed the time, smoking and wondering what kind of "Oppo" I would have to accompany during my periods on stag until 6am the following day.

Guard duties by this time had become a very tiresome and boring routine, which could be either intensified or alleviated by the character of ones "oppo."

This battalion, which I had joined at the age of seventeen in 1939, had been decimated in France and I was finding it a search to track down any of my old pals of two years before.

Just before 10pm I picked my way between the sleeping men and shook the shoulder of the man in the corner. The face revealed ..END OF 264 WORD SAMPLE OF 566 WORDS.

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