Lost so Many Friends so Quickly

As I said things quietened down by now, it’s getting about, must be around noon, we’re tired, you know, we’ve been on since three in the morning we have been on the water and then all the strain on all my buddies. I landed there with 36 signallers, only nine of us survived and only two out of the nine that weren’t wounded. So that’s my own platoon. Now these were guys that I spent nearly three years with day and night and they’re gone like that, you know. I’ve spoken to school kids and I’ve said we’ve got a whole classroom, two classes here, maybe you got about one hundred people here. I said, “Just look at your buddy next to you, you’re going to school with all the time and as I said that just in a matter of two minutes all of you are dead except one and you look around, what would you feel like? ” And I said that’s the feeling you get when it’s all over and you just look at all those, your buddies, laying there, they’re not going to get up again.