The Night I Nearly Shot an Officer by G. H. Jales

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Matt Bray of CSV Media on behalf of Mr G. H. Jales and had been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites’s terms and conditions.

Mr G. H. Jales (C/MX700083 Petty Officer) remembers Night Watch at Rodean Girl’s College in 1945.

On watch on New Year’s Day from midnight until 4 o’clock in the morning , a cold snowy miserable night, the two of us on watch decided to have a smoke. We crept behind the coal yard to get out of the wind and rolled ourselves a “tickler”, (cigarette), to cheer ourselves up. During our smoke my colleague said “What was that noise?” I didn’t want to hear any noises, but there was a small noise somewhere in front of us, a slithery noise, as if someone was dragging themselves along through the snow.

I gave the official challenge three times “halt, who goes there”, but got no response. I then took the next step, “halt or I’ll fire”, three times. Still nothing. I had visions of half the German army creeping along towards me. I then did the rattle of the bolt on the rifle, to make whoever it was think I was putting a cartridge in. Once again, no response. This was beginning to look quite serious, so I felt in my pocket for my ammunition. The first thing that I got was my cheese sandwich! I found a five round clip of point 303 ammunition and then discovered there’d been a serious gap in my training, as I had no idea how to put my ammunition in my rifle.

Fortunately, I then heard a faint “friend”…..it was a naval officer who had had a little too much to drink at the New Year’s party, crawling along through the snow having lost his way and finished up at my post. Fortunately my lack of knowledge of small arms saved his life.

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