But the final quarry position showed many signs of vivid battle: scarred walls; heaped in dug outs and trenches; shrivelled and burnt guava trees, their fruit crisped up to the size of black oak apples; lying too, among the debris was the skeleton of a wounded man who had died on his stretcher and then been burnt. The C.O.’s car was still there, burnt right out. We found some Emergency Rations in the back of it, the chocolate turned into charcoal. Digging about the Battalion H.Q. trench near which some of our rations had been kept, we managed to disinter a few tins of battered ‘M. & V.’, for us a very valuable thing. There was nothing more to do here except bury the poor, white skeleton.

And so we left the quarry. Behind us now were the memories of the night we arrived there, and the amazing and seemingly endless intricacies of barbed wire through which we had stumbled and cursed, our legs and puttees ripped and scratched. Gone now the memories of those ‘75’ shells that burst directly on the trenches of the Signal Platoon, nearly driving their Platoon Commander mad with impotency because he could do nothing to help them. And then those five pathetic, gibbering, crawling shell-shock cases in one morning. What was it I said to the Padre, as we pressed there against the wall, seeking shelter from the shells? Wasn’t it that all war that made such things possible was an immoral and unjustifiable thing?

There remained now only to identify the grave, if it existed, of my friend Peter Ayre. On the last night before the capitulation he had been ordered out on patrol on our right flank to try to contact our neighbours, and also to try and get some information about alleged enemy tanks operating there. With his platoon Sergeant and one man, Peter had crept up to the side of the dark road leading up to Thompson Village. Spasmodic machine gun fire made them keep their heads down, and eventually they rounded a bend beyond which a gentle slope led up to the village. Just round the bend they saw something white in the middle of the road, and as Peter went to examine it a burst of machine gun struck him in the breast, killing him instantly. His Sergeant was untouched, but the third man was several times wounded, and after calling in vain for his officer, whom he hoped had escaped on the other side of the road, the Sergeant made his way back with the wounded man to report to Battalion H.Q.