On This Day 10 February 1944 - Italy - Our Stretcher bearers were always outstanding!

 On This Day 10 February 1944 - Italy - Our Stretcher bearers were always outstanding!

W.A. Elliott, an Officer in 2 Scots Guards, described Monte Natale:

The mud was so sodden that our slit trenches soon filled up again, whilst we sat on branches suspended halfway up the sides.   The snow only came in the form of sleet although the mountain tops in front were now covered in a white mantle.   I spent three days like this, soaked to the skin.   It seemed worse than the 1914-18 war when deep trenches were all interconnected and there were also communal dugouts.

         On the third night the Germans brought up a mortar to fire harassing shots at my Platoon, which they must have observed on our forward slope.   Their shooting was very accurate, as they put down over thirty bombs on one of my Section positions.   But fortunately, only half of them exploded in the deep mud.   Two bombs landed near me in the same slit trench as two Guardsmen.   The first broke one man’s leg and the next bomb blew the other’s head off.   I was glad the night was dark when I removed what remained of one man in order to get the survivor on a stretcher.  He was very brave about it and kept on telling the stretcher-bearers to leave him and take cover in a slit trench until the mortaring was over.   Our stretcher bearers were always outstanding.”