One of the several narrow escapes that I had from serious injury or worse during my service in four services happened when we were doing gunnery exercises of the Austalian coast on the frigate HMAS Murchison. We were practising what we called change round which meant that on the signal every man was to take another man's action station as we were firing at a target towed by a tug. We had changed stations several times when I found myself loading shells into one of our rear 4.5ince twin guns.doing rapid firings,on this occasion only the right gun fired and I was holding a live shell ready to reload the left gun, now when there was a misfire the Captain of the gun was supposed to yell "STill" which meant nobody to move until the problem was solved only this time the new Captain of the gun panicked and hit the local emergencty release switch which fired the gun and the empty shell came out of the breech and hit me holding the live shell knocking me on my behind still holding the live shell luckly my opposite number grabbed the live shell and threw it overboard otherwise I might be wearing wings now. Mauri

Mauri,

I am sure all will agree, we are so glad you are here with us still. Someone's prayers were about you then.
Pat