The Petrol Drum

This night it was pitch black and I could not see my hands in front of my face. I was on sentry duty again. I just stood there for two hours waving one hand in front of me as I grasped the Owen gun with the other.

I was ready to bump off anything I touched. The moonlit nights also had their problems, for everything seemed to be moving and walking towards you, tree stumps, petrol drums or whatever. When I was keeping the sentry company one night, it was Harry Lauder, who later died of scrub typhus, he suddenly announced, “I know you are only a petrol drum but take another step forward you bastard and I will let you have it.”

Nick Maine, 2/2nd Battalion, New Guinea