On 16th December 1944 the Germans launched an unexpected attack on the American positions in the forests of the Ardennes. It was unexpected because the weather had prevented any aerial reconnaissance for some weeks. By the middle of January the situation was just about under control but the Germans had pushed the Allies back, forming a bulge pointing westwards. We were ordered to cover the southern flank of this bulge, to prevent the Germans turning left and advancing across Central France.
We were told to prepare for a long drive back over the Vosges and then north to our allocated position. It was intensely cold and, in places, the roads were deep in snow. In those days vehicles were not fitted with heaters and, after driving for many hours with only ten minute stops every hour, we were relieved to be told we had arrived. We seemed to be in the middle of a treeless windswept and featureless plain. It was already dark but, by morning, the place looked even less welcoming.
I was asked to go with a patrol whose purpose was to locate the whereabouts of the enemy. Any sort of activity was welcome and off we went, three tanks crewed by some of my friends and myself in my ambulance. We descended into a wooded area driving along a small lane with high banks of the sort seen in Devon. The vehicles were about thirty yards apart and, when the lead tank went out of sight round a corner, I heard a loud explosion. Clearly we had found the Germans or, more correctly, they had found us. We had driven into an ambush!
What now happens is mostly hearsay, as told to me by the surviving crew of the damaged tank. It had been hit by what we called a bazooka and the Germans referred to as a panzerfaust. The driver of the Sherman had been killed instantly, but the other four crewman had got out leaving the tank burning. They were sheltering from small-arms fire in the ditch when they saw me run to the tank, presumably thinking they were inside. There was too much noise and smoke to attract my attention although they tried their best but then the tank exploded and I came flying through the air, to land on the road in front of them. They came out of the ditch at great risk to themselves and dragged me into the partial shelter of the damaged tank. By this time the second tank had dispersed the Germans although one machine-gun was still firing. One of the crew went off and turned my vehicle round and backed it up to where I was lying.
At this point I regained consciousness for a time and can vaguely remember several faces peering down at me. Drill and practice took over, as usual, and I gave myself a shot of morphine. However, I lapsed into unconsciousness again before I could mark a blue letter "M" on my forehead which is the required sign to the hospital people that a dose had already been administered. I can vaguely remember wondering why my right shoe should be near my ear, then I was on a stretcher in my own ambulance being driven by one of the tank crew. The others sat with me and as the morphine began to work I was able to ask then what had happened. It was then that they told me of the events just recorded.
The "official" record of the destruction of the tank reported that the crew set it on fire themselves to prevent it being used by the enemy. I was, of course, heavily sedated and drifting in and out of consciousness when I heard them tell their story, but whatever the truth, I was delivered to the American Field Hospital within an hour of being hit.
The Hospital knew me very well but could have done without an unexpected casualty just then. They were under orders to move to a safer place and I was the last case to go to the operating theatre before it was dismantled. All they could do was to tidy me up and put both legs in plaster before putting me onto an ambulance train for Paris. Before I went one of the technicians, whom I knew quite well, came to give me the required dose of sedative for the journey. He asked me what on earth I had been doing before I was wounded as, when he matched my blood for a transfusion, he found, so he said, half morphine and half alcohol; so much for my efforts to keep warm with tots of brandy and missing out with the blue pencil!
When I began to come to the surface again it was clear that I was in a bunk on a hospital train but we were not moving. The American staff looked a bit worried, and those patients who were conscious certainly were worried. After what seemed a very long time the senior American officer came into our car and gave a short speech that he was obviously getting tired of repeating. We were stuck in a snow drift, there was plenty of food, water and, of course, drugs. We were not to worry, but by telling us not to worry we did, of course, worry more. It seemed to be light outside but I had totally lost track of time. I was given another heavy dose of sedative, but was shaken awake by the efforts of the French railway men to drag the train out of the snow. They evidently succeeded because my next return to reality was in a hospital in Paris, being loaded on to a stretcher on a trolley by a cheerful coloured American orderly. He casually informed me that when I woke up again I should be in the States! I sat up started to make it very plain that I was British and the last thing I wanted was to wake up in the States. I heard my friendly orderly say to his officer "Sir, we've got a Limey here who won't go to the States." The next time I came to the surface I was obviously in a hospital ship in a gale on the way, I hoped, to England. Fortunately, I am not bothered by sea-sickness, but nearly all the other patients were. I was soon given more sedative and drifted away from the groaning, retching horror around me.
My final return to consciousness was in a hospital ward in Swansea. Jan was by my bed-side, and having cleared up the question of whether I was already in heaven, I realised for the first time that the war, for me, was over.