No Allowance for Ear Plugs

To my mental comfort, I’ll put it that way, for me to accept what is going on. You go where you are supposed to go, you do what you are supposed to do and whatever happens, it happens and you can’t do a thing about it. Luckily I didn’t have any personal injury except losing my hearing because being the a gun loader and at that time I went into a tank after driving the brigadier and my head was the closest to that end what we call the firefly which has the seventeen pounder got in to which they used to and try to knock out a tank because the other tank, three tanks in a troop at 75 millimetre which is a lighter gun and so the crews were issued rubber ear plugs but they wouldn’t issue, they told me I couldn’t have a set for my ears because I had to listen to the radio and they didn’t want, you know, a misunderstanding in that process and so I put that down to losing my, I don’t know if probably ear plugs would have saved my hearing but I feel that’s how it happened.