“One interesting thing happened at this moment. I was signalled by radio to go back to where the London Irish were having their ‘O’ Group for the attack and I think I must have crawled a quarter of a mile down a ditch to get to where I gathered from the map references where the ‘O’ Group was taking place and the enemy were absolutely watering the whole place with shell fire of one sort or another as they realised that they had to stop any reinforcements coming up for a further attack.
Anyway, we survived alright and got to where the ‘O’ Group is being held and I found it in a fair state of shambles because when the ‘O’ Group was just starting, both the Commanding Officer of the London Irish and the CO of the 16/5 Lancers, who had both been present, were killed. One of the Company Commanders was severely injured, another was wounded and several of the signallers and other people were wounded and all the radios were out of action except the gunners’ radio and so when I arrived and asked what was going on and they told me and I asked if that meant that they didn’t know what the orders were, what they were to do and they said that was absolutely right.
The only people that knew were the two Commanding Officers. They’d be briefed by the Brigade HQ on what to do… so I asked whether there was a radio working and they said that they thought that one was working to Brigade, to the Gunner terminal, and I said that we should get onto that. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I managed to get hold of the Commanding Officer, Brigadier Pat Scott, who was a wonderful Brigadier. He was one of the best battle Brigadiers, I would have said, during the war and he caught on very quickly.
I talked in sort of “sign language” to try for it not to be picked up by the enemy and I said, “I am where you told me to come to…” and he said “Well…why are you taking to me?.” and I said ”Well, because I’m the only one here..” and he said, “Well, what about Sunray?” that meant the Commanding Officer of the London Irish and I said “I’m afraid that he is no longer with us.” and the Brigadier asked: “What about the CO of the other one?” meaning the 16/5 Lancers and I said, “I’m sorry… he’s no longer with us, either.” He then said, “I understand. I’ll be up with you as quickly as I can.”
We all knew that in normal training times, he had told us that once he had given us our instructions and we asked questions and we knew what to do, he didn’t want to be bothered at all and he said that it was no part of a Brigade Commander’s job to be up in the forward area of the battle when it was going on because i) it was more likely that he would be knocked off and ii) his job was back at HQ watching how the battle went and be in a position to give further orders. However, on this occasion, he told me later that this was an exception so he got into one of the 16/5 Lancers’ tanks and came up with the Second in Command, who was Major John Horsfall, who took over as CO. Brigadier Scott had given him instructions and outline of what the London Irish were to do while they were moving up in the tank. The Brigadier and John Horsfall jumped out of the tank and the latter started giving orders and, when Pat Scott saw that everything was reasonably under control, he got back into the tank and went back to Brigade HQ. And that was the right thing to do, to my mind. And, meanwhile, I crawled up the ditch again and, by that time, the good Mitchell had dug me a nice slit trench and I got into it.”