13419/7 Major The Reverend David Cooper
I was busy trying to collect casualties. We'd got a lot, we couldn't get them out, this was the real problem and indeed, a helicopter had coming forward to try to take 'H' out was shot down. So, not unreasonably, the Air Corps were reluctant to come out and for some hours we were on and around Darwin hillside with dwindling ammunition and an increasing number of casualties and no means of getting them out. I decided I was going to try to get to one of the forward companies having heard that they'd got casualties and I walked up Darwin Hill to try to get to them. At the top I came to the Gorse line and I passed main headquarters said where I was going and tried to get forward and had the gorse hedge just shot apart around me. I was aware of an enormous amount of noise, of shots going by, of the hedge disintegrating in splinters, twigs flying about, something plucked my sleeve. I eventually got through it and lay down with a soldier who was in a small hollow and could smell whisky. We had a conversation about which of us had been drinking before I realised in fact the hip flask I had been carrying with Bob Fox's whisky in had diverted a bullet and the shot had hit the flask and glanced off to the left. In the event, and I rather regret it now, but I threw the flask away and said "Its no use to me, the Argentines might as well have it."