Tough days

It was quite an introduction because that was our first gun position, very first gun position was, during night you couldn't see what was the, where the stink was coming from, you know, but came daylight it was obvious. They were all over the place and some of them had, had been killed maybe a month before, and never been buried. Yeah, it was an awful, the worst position that we ever occupied really when it comes, now there was no shelling as it turned out, there was no, we didn't fire a round from there, went into action but we never fired. The next position is where we really suffered from bombing, shelling, because we were put in full view of the enemy, in the next position, in an amphitheatre, full view, the whole division.
We never really were able to, I must put it this way, the lay of the land was such that if we were to be within range of the potential targets during a potential advance, we had to be in full view. It was a great amphitheatre, which ended the back of the amphitheatre in a cliff, a real cliff up to Carpiquet Aerodrome, to another level. If you went back to Carpiquet Aerodrome you were out of range of supporting anything over the Orne River you see. And somebody decided, well, "too bad old boy" but we are going to have to put you in full view of the enemy. So you'll be, have the range. We, we didn't know why they'd put us, but we, we, we reasoned that somebody was an idiot, we, we looked upon as idiotic.