‘They thought I was dead too’
Death evaded Bill Roulston during World War II, but only just.
More than 70 years later, the Tapanui man, now aged in his late 90s, can vividly recall two close calls.
An anti-tank gunner during the war years, he was clearing a road when either a mortar or grenade – he still doesn’t know – went off and a piece of shrapnel pierced into his side. He was out of action for a time, but considers himself lucky the damage wasn’t worse. The shrapnel remains in his side to this day.
Several weeks after returning to his division he again came close to death when a building in Italy that he was in blew up.
‘‘Five out of seven of us were killed there . . . and they thought I was dead too.’’
It happened about 2am and he was knocked out under the rubble for ‘‘quite some time’’, he said.
‘‘Our chaps packed up and went away to the south side of Italy, and a British division came in and took over.’’
They got him out, he said. ‘‘I got to the stage where I had woken up and I couldn’t get breath. I was certain the last breath was right there. The only thought I had was, well, it wasn’t such a bad way to die.’’
It wasn’t to be. ‘‘Half a minute after that someone uncovered me . . . and I never found out what it was to die.’’
His leg was damaged and he ended up in a hospital with no New Zealanders in sight. ‘‘That was the worst thing.’’
There was talk of his leg being amputated but he eventually came right and ended back with his division, he said.
He still does not know what blew up the building, but believes it was a mine.
‘‘After I was buried I couldn’t stand sleeping in a building at night [during his remaining war days].’’
It took him a long time to speak of his war experiences. ‘‘There’s no way you can talk about it when you get back because nobody would believe you.
‘‘Things sort of come back to me and I can’t even talk to the old people in the home about it . . . It was too traumatic.’’
Roulston had been called up to war when he was a 20-year-old working on a South Otago farm.
The stakes had been high, he said. ‘‘We would have gone through the gas chambers if we didn’t win the war.’’
For him, Anzac Day 2019 did not hold the appeal it once did.
‘‘It meant a lot more when the rest of our chaps were still alive.’’