Decisions in Battle can Cause Regret

You’d be marching along a field with your rifle forward and you’d be fired upon. You had a drill that said, “Down, crawl, observe, fire!” You’d hit the ground, you’d roll over and over, pick up a firing position and try and identify the enemy and fire. One incident that comes to mind, we were walking along in platoon formation and suddenly from the distance from here to that front door a machine gun opened up on us and it could have mowed us all down and there was a chap by the name of Stuart in my platoon who had a machine, what was called a Bren gun, an automatic Bren gun and he just swerved and fired back and killed those people but my point was that I regret that I never wrote up the heroic deed of that man Stuart. And, of course, you’re always full of, I mentioned you’re always concerned did you make the right decision to send out that patrol, to withdraw that patrol, to call down fire and so it’s a period of decision making time, some you will always regret and it’s always you must take it in the sign that in the fog of war and what you knew with the conditions at the time is probably reasonable. I won’t say good but probably reasonable.