On the return journey his right leg was blown off close below the knee and he was wounded in both arms. By a kind of miracle⁠—the miracle of human courage⁠—he did not drop down and die in the mud of the trench, mud so deep that unwounded men found it hard to walk⁠—but made his way along fifty yards of trench toward the crater where his comrades were hard pressed. He came up to Lance-corporal Newman, who was bombing with his sector to the right of the position. Cotter called to him and directed him to bomb six feet toward where help was most needed, and worked his way forward to the crater where the Germans had developed a violent counterattack.