If I Hadn’t Fallen, I was Gone

We got out of there and we got in the water running on the trail like for water catch and my gosh, and my foot, I was running and I tripped in a vine, like a branch or something and it was cut plumb right in front of me (inaudible). There I looked and I looked and I couldn’t find nothing to haul myself up and I was hooked there, my foot. And now the Japs was behind - they were coming over the hill. Finally I got, I got myself up and I was running again and the first thing I hear, when I got to the water catch, first thing I heard was the guns . . . bak, bak, bak, bak, bak. Bren guns and rifles. I says to myself, “I’m done.” I kept going, so when I got up to the water catch, I fell, I tripped again and I fell and when I fell the bullet struck in the water catch and the stuff all come down over my helmet, the cement. If I hadn’t of fallen, I was gone. I don’t know if that’s what saved me. Then I kept going there and there were puddles, they were like squares into the water catch. They call it a water catch - the big squares about this deep and the water lodge into that, that’s what they call a water catch. Well, anyway there was a kind of a bend in it and I hear “bang, bang,” so I happen to look. That was Lance Ross and Sgt. Major MacDonnell. They were shooting off the Japs, keeping the Japs back with a (inaudible) and a rifle, they were behind us. Anyway they told me, “Keep on, the lunch cart was over there,” and I started and kept going but what did I come across, was a uniform and a cap and a pair of boots, but no body. There were no body, they took the body out, must of. Anyway, I kept going and I come to about where the others were there, our boys, and they says, “You’re too late, the lunch is gone.” I says, “The lunch is gone, I don’t care for the lunch. I don’t feel for eating anyway.” I said, “I had all what I can handle.” They says, “Well, where did you eat? ” I says, “I didn’t eat. I am played out running, I had to run!”