James Holland

Everyone's tired.

And Skinner's been kind of hurtling around, burying people, going back to the coast to kind of check on surprises and welcoming new men and all the rest of it.

Because he's playing this sort of pastoral role as well as the actual priest.

And he writes in his diary, Nightmare of that year.

Meanwhile, A squadron has been stood down again.

And so they've gone back to sleep.

And those medium guns are firing throughout the night.

And Semkin sleeps through 14 hours straight despite these guns firing.

And I remember him telling me this.

He said, I never heard a single one.

And he didn't get up till 4.30 the following afternoon.

Yeah.

And he spends an hour getting food, another hour washing, shaving, dressing in fresh clothes, and then kind of, you know, writing letters, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, completely, completely.

And then Skinner then gets to work.

He writes up a list of the 54 Sherwood Rangers that have been killed or wounded since D-Day.

You know, when you think in total in tanks, I think it's 328.

Yeah.

But those 54 are all crew, tank crew.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.