There was a young lad in the Worcesters and his nerve must have broke. You see, instead of him being there to go on duty at night he was missing. Well he couldn’t get away because it was all wild scrub country, nobody within miles. Anyway he was missing, and of course they got hold of him and of course he was very soon in the ‘jankers’, you see for absence, desertion and all sorts cowardice and all sorts of things, of course he was court-martialled and condemned to be shot. Well if there’s one thing as I am thankful that didn’t happen to me, it so happened that our platoon had been chosen to be the ones to shoot him, and it so happened also that particular night or morning I was Corporal of the Gas Guard again so I didn’t come into consideration.

So a sergeant, and I think, it was six or twelve men had got to shoot him. As I was on guard I’d got to wake them up at 4 o’clock and provide them with a cup of tea before they went. They took this young chap and shot…..in the army they always used to make you believe that if there was twelve men, only one would have a live shot. But that was all ‘bunkum’. You could tell if you were firing a live ‘un or a blank. Of course they blindfolded the man and put something, a white patch, on his heart. It would have been in my mind for the rest of my life it I’d been one of those that shot him.