Our casualties were light then, but in those days we had not become accustomed to the loss of comrades and so we felt the toll of death very bitterly.
It made a great difference to me to have a house of my own.

Previously I had found it most difficult to get any place in which to lay my head.

On one occasion, I had obtained permission from a kind-hearted farmer's wife to rent one corner of the kitchen in her two-roomed house.

It was on a Saturday night and when the family had retired to their room I spread my sleeping bag in the corner and went to bed.

I got up when the family had gone to Mass in the morning.