Sunday25th April, 2010 (ANZAC Day)

Q+A’s Paul Holmes Interviews Khaki Angel Author Brandon O’Carroll & 89 Year Old Stretcher Bearer Denis Bounsall.

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

BRANDON O’CARROLL & DENIS BOUNSALL interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL There are many many stories of courage and grim sacrifice that came from war, but one seldom told really is that of the stretcher bearer, the men who went to war unarmed, who ran into raging battlefields, armed only with a Red Cross on their arms, tending not only to their own but to enemy soldiers as well. A Maori Battalion Officer at Casino where the going was treacherous called the stretcher bearers the bravest of the brave. Mr Denis Bounsall was a stretcher bearer in the British Army, joined the British Army when he was 15 as a boy soldier, as a bandsman, and in World War II became a stretcher bearer with the Dorsetshire Regiment, he was on one of the very first landing craft to come ashore at Normandy on DDay in 1944, and he was awarded the distinguished conduct medal for bravery, which was second only to the Victoria Cross, we won that in Sicily. Denis moved to New Zealand in 1952.

Now, author Brendan O'Carroll heard of his extraordinary story and decided to write a book, he's called it 'Khaki Angels', about stretcher bearers, the role of the stretcher bearer in the New Zealand Army in both world wars. So thank both of you very much Brendan and Denis for coming on the programme. You believe Brendan that the role of the stretcher bearer has been neglected in the telling of the stories in the histories, been underestimated.

BRANDON O'CARROLL – Author, 'Khaki Angels'
Oh indeed so Paul, because there's no glory in being a stretcher bearer, but it was real heroics, these are forgotten heroes, there's no doubt about that.

PAUL Why were they though, because I've noticed this myself in the great histories you read of the campaigns and so forth, and some of us read that kind of stuff I spose, but the stretcher bearer is almost absent from the accounts, why is that?

BRANDON Indeed, I've read many history books and the cry goes for stretcher bearer or medic that’s about all you hear about them, but the fact is that they're the ones who had to clean up the mess, they're the real – you know they we're stoic, tough, compassionate men, and they just had to do what no one else was prepared to do.

PAUL What did they do, I mean you’ve likened it to the New York firemen going up when everyone else is coming down.

BRANDON That’s dead right, while there's a say shelling or fire or no man's land, the bearers went out recovered the wounded, dressed their wounds, dragged them back, in the meantime the infantry soldier was seeking shelter, which is a natural thing for a soldier to do, so the bearer had to get out there do his duty and bring the man back under fire mostly.

PAUL So what kind of dressing were they doing when they got to the wounded man and got him back to some kind of safety, what was the first thing they did?

BRANDON The main thing is to suppress the blood flow, the wounds, so they had field dressings, or shell dressings, they sometimes had to apply a tourniquet, or a splint to the foot or the arm and then once the blood flow was suppressed they could carry the man by stretcher or over his shoulder, back to a regimental aid post.

PAUL But on many occasions they were under fire while they were out there getting the men back?

BRANDON Indeed, in fact most occasions, which makes them you know exceptionally brave.

PAUL Denis, thank you sir for coming in.

DENIS BOUNSALL – WWII Stretcher Bearer
My pleasure.

PAUL You were in the first line of landing craft I understand on Gold Beach which was one of the three British beaches on DDay, talk about that. So you get into the landing craft from the ships what about half a mile out?

DENIS Yes we dropped off, it was fairly shallow fortunately, probably about two feet deep.

PAUL Go back though to when you're first coming in, the Germans started to fire, the fire was intense, coming into the beach.

DENIS Well before we go on to the craft the shore defences were fully in action, they were firing at us with machine guns, artillery.

PAUL Was it madness?

DENIS Absolutely, and the noise was deafening, we'd got all the shells from our own battleships on the horizon, flinging over their one ton shells on to the high ground behind the immediate beach.

PAUL You had the fire coming at you as well from the ...

DENIS And we had the German machine gun fire from their beach posts, and mortars and artillery from their positions in their defences.

PAUL How would you describe the noise in those minutes of coming ashore?

DENIS Absolutely deafening.

PAUL Were you terrified?

DENIS No I think we were only concentrating on the job in hand, the whole scene was so enormous, the volume of ships, troops, pouring ashore.

PAUL So you get on to the beach what about two feet of water you come into.

DENIS I got into two feet of water, tripped off the edge and went flat on my face, into the water.

PAUL Into the water, and so everything on you, pack, all your equipment, everything's soaked.

DENIS Absolutely.

PAUL What weight of gear were you jumping off with do you think?

DENIS Probably about 60 pounds, then it got wet.

PAUL Yeah, make it heavier.

DENIS Made it 160.

PAUL Now you rush across the beach right?

DENIS Yes, straight up the beach and under cover of a bank about four feet higher than the beach, which gave us protection, and at that point stripped off the pack, dumped it and started running back to pick up the casualties.

PAUL Were there many of those?

DENIS Quite a number, some were dead before they even reached the beach, and we just ran amongst them, if they were dead they stayed there, if they were wounded we picked them up, dragged them up.

PAUL When you say we, you mean you and another stretcher bearer?

DENIS Yes there were four of us with the company.

PAUL So you spent what several hours just scampering around that beach under the most intense fire of the modern era probably.

DENIS That’s right.

PAUL You dressed I think about 80 men you write, that morning?

DENIS Yes as a team.

PAUL Were some of the wounds terrible?

DENIS Some of the wounds were very severe, legs blown away, arms blown away, flesh wounds, some from bullets, some from shells, just such a terrifying spectacle, but at the same time it was so big and you felt so small, you didn’t have time to feel frightened, you just carried on and you picked them up, you brought them back, found where the wound was, cut the clothing away, stuck a dressing on it and pulled them under cover.

PAUL How did you not get hit Mr Bounsall?

DENIS That’s purely a matter of luck.

PAUL I think you say in our memoir you say you’ve gotta zig when you're supposed to zig and zag when you're supposed to zag, and that’s what it's all about.

DENIS Well if you get them the wrong way round it can be fatal.

PAUL So that’s the first day of Normandy and you survived, and you write also around the middle of the day you look up and suddenly realise how big this show is. What did you see when you looked out to sea?

DENIS An absolute panorama of literally hundreds if not thousands of ships, big ships, the big landing craft, we came in on the small landing craft with about 30 men, the following up troops came in on much bigger craft.

PAUL I must mention too that the boat landing craft on either side of you were hit coming in, what did you see?

DENIS Yes, out of the corner of my eyes I saw the flash as the shell struck and I saw a body flying up in the air out of the craft, how many others were wounded I don’t know of course.

PAUL You also talked to me about the main memory you’ve got of a battlefield in that Normandy area was the stench.

DENIS That comes later, we didn’t notice it on the beach because of course it was water, but once you get inland and of course our artillery ...

PAUL It's the stench of the animals isn't it blowing up, and guts blowing up.

DENIS Yes, dead cattle, dead horses.

PAUL The tragedy of the animals.

DENIS Yeah the tragedy indeed.

PAUL Tell me just quickly about Sicily too because you had a distinguished time in Sicily, you carried a fellow for what a day and a night, you were in behind enemy lines, you were trying to find your own unit and you were for that given an immediate distinguished conduct medal. Which is that one, point that one out.

DENIS This one at the front.

PAUL That’s the one, closest to our heart sir.

DENIS Closest to the heart yes.

PAUL But you had a big time carrying him cos he was a big fellow and his leg was hanging of and you put a splint on that. Monty himself, General Montgomery came by, did he give you the ribbon?

DENIS Well when the fighting in Sicily ended Monty came to the battalion and he stood on the bonnet of his jeep and pulled some cigarettes out of his pockets, tossed them around and said smoke if you want to, you bet we wanted to, and then he said how well we'd done, and he said that everywhere he was going we would go with him, and any job that the others couldn’t do we would do, so we sort of called ourselves Monty's Own after that.

PAUL Do you feel the role of the stretcher bearer's been undervalued?

DENIS I never thought of it that way, I just thought that like everybody else we did a job, it wasn’t a job of our own choice and I should say we were all fully trained soldiers, every one of us could fire rifles, machine guns, and you know.

PAUL Brendan tell me about the stretcher bearer in the Western Desert.

BRANDON Well it was pretty tough out there Paul because there's no protection, they're totally exposed and the worst injury soldiers got was from shell splinters and in an open space they were just everywhere, so if you were a stretcher bearer in the desert you had to deal with being more exposed than anyone else, and the heat, the flies, the sun.

PAUL The flies apparently were terrible.

BRANDON They were, and they'd get in your wounds, cause infection.

PAUL Yeah now, of course one of the reasons that survival rates were better in the second world war than in the first world war was the invention of sulphur or Sulphadimidine?

BRANDON That’s correct yeah.

PAUL And what was that used for?

BRANDON That was used as sort of like an antiseptic if you like.

PAUL Yeah it was like out of a pepper shaker?

BRANDON Yeah they did, so when the wound was – first thing you'd do was sprinkle that stuff over the wound and then put the field dressing on and that helped kill some germs in the meantime until they got the A paste.

PAUL I understand from your book that one of the tasks that stretcher bearers hated most of all was getting bodies or bits of bodies, burnt bodies out of tanks that had been ...

BRANDON That was the worst job, and if a man was wounded in the tank it was very difficult trying to extract him, short space, no room, and the tankie's greatest fear always was trying to escape from a burning tank, there's one veteran I met who for years after the war kept throwing himself out of bed thinking he was jumping out of his burning tank.

PAUL Are you proud to have served Denis?

DENIS Very much so, and I'm proud of the regiment that I served with.

PAUL And why did you come to New Zealand after the war?

DENIS I wasn’t demobbed until 1948, I was a regular soldier and I had to complete a 12 year contract, so I did the last three years of my service in Germany.

PAUL Why New Zealand?

DENIS Because I was always impressed, like all British troops were, by the record of the New Zealand soldier, he was among the elite as far as we were concerned.

PAUL Cos they all went hunting, you could give them a rifle, throw a uniform on.

DENIS That’s right he was a natural soldier, the Kiwi of that generation. He grew up on a farm or even if he didn’t he went hunting or shooting at the weekends, he was used to the bush, he was used to camping out, actually in his leisure he was living a soldier's life, so all you had to do in wartime was give him a bigger rifle and he'd do the job.

PAUL Thank you so much for coming in, thank you so much Denis for your service. Thank you for coming on the programme. Brendan O'Carroll thank you very much for writing the book, of course Denis also speaks about the two months in Normandy as they fought their way through blood all over your tunic, unable to bathe, blood all over your fingernails, ingrained in your hands.

ENDS

© Scoop Media