'It was him or me, the shot was a few inches above my head'

Part 9: Snipers

IN French, the word bocage means mixed woodland and pastureland. To us in the 9th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry in Normandy 60 years ago, the Bocage meant deadly sniper territory.

We had, of course, been troubled by snipers before.

The tight orchards, the dense hedgerows, the sunken roads and the bombdamaged villages that we encountered in the days after D-Day provided plenty of places for snipers to hide.

I heard once that one section of the Durham Light Infantry came under fire from a female sniper who was hidden in a church steeple.

To progress, the officers apparently had to make the difficult decision to bring the whole spire down with mortar fire.

To slow us up and spread confusion, German snipers targeted British officers, picking off those with binoculars around their necks or stripes on their arms - which is why I kept my sergeant's stripes safely hidden in my pocket.

Shortly after D-Day, half-adozen of us members of 9th Battalion were in a trench, sitting facing one another.

One of the lads passed a mug of tea over to his mate.

We heard the crack of a sniper's bullet. Something whistled between us and the tea flew all over us.

"Bloody hell, " he said.

"It's gone straight through my wrist. That will see me back home!"

He had a smile right across his face and didn't feel any pain because he was in such deep shock. I put a swab over his wound and was rather pleased with the tidy job I made of it. But then, it wasn't my blood.

The poor chap went back to recover, but never got as far as Blighty. He rejoined us about five weeks later, and was killed almost immediately.

As we pushed inland, June 1944 turning into July, we moved into an area called the Bocage.

It was even closer, tighter than the rest of Normandy.

Perfect territory to defend with booby traps and snipers. I was in S Company, which was specialist in bomb defusing, and we had to sweep absolutely everywhere for mines.

Reminders of just what they could do were all over:

tanks burnt out - or "brewed up" to use the technical term - by the roadside. On one occasion, I couldn't resist a peek inside.

The guys had been trapped, no way out. They looked like charcoal images of men.

One of our lads touched a burned body and it crumbled into ashes on his fingers. It must have been a terrible death.

War is not pleasant. If politicians were forced to experience such things, they would find a different, more peaceful, solution.

Being under such deadly stress in the Bocage is extremely tiring. One day, we were at a standstill in a small out-building. Dusk was falling. Bill "Geordie" Burroughs from Seaham said: "Get a bit of shut-eye, Chas."I felt so tired and drained, I simply put my back to the wall, rifle between my legs and, facing the doorway, sighed with relief, ready for sleep.

Then I noticed Geordie had gone. There was another figure framed in the doorway. I was suddenly very awake.

The German soldier brought up his arm to take aim at me. As he did, I dropped my hand on to my rifle and pulled the trigger without aiming. There were two loud retorts, and the German stepped back in slow motion before keeling right over.

Geordie came running in, pulling his trousers up on the way. It would have been hilarious on any other day.

He reached the doorway and squeaked: "He's a bloody sniper!" He started to brush me down as I was covered in a white powder from the plaster and whitewash on the wall upon which I had been momentarily resting.

"I hope you've washed your hands, Geordie, " I muttered.

I turned round and looked at where the German's bullet had slammed into the wall. The hole was just a few inches above where my head had been.

This discovery made me feel better. It proved that it really had been him or me.

And it had been him, not me. It had been my lucky day.