In search of lost time

My friend Mickie O'Brien, late of 47 and 44 RM Cdo, died the other day. I'm not sure how old he was — late 80s, I would imagine — but, whatever, it was good going for a man who should have been killed at least twice in the 1940s, once at the Battle of Kangaw when the Japs shot away half his stomach and once when he walked deliberately into a minefield to rescue a French farmer. For one exploit or another Mickie won an MC.

The question I used to ask Mickie most often was how he managed to cope ...