Rats of Tobruk Digger Joe Madeley remembers finding an angel by his bed Joe Madeley and Elsie Parry are reunited. Picture: Peter Lorimer Source: The Sunday Telegraph World War II veteran Joe Madeley. WHEN he opened his eyes after being knocked out by an enemy shell, Joe Madeley thought he must have been looking at an angel. Gone was the battle noise and a beautiful smell perfumed the air. Surely he had died and gone to heaven, he thought. Lance Corporal Madeley was one of the famous Rats of Tobruk, the Diggers who stopped Germany's Afrika Korps in their tracks as they swept across North Africa during World War II. Then, stationed at El Alamein with the 2/13th Battalion on October 31, 1942, he was rushed to hospital with shrapnel wounds. "When I woke up there was dead silence after all the bang and crash which had gone on for days on end," said Mr Madeley, now 93 and living at Berkeley Vale on the Central Coast. I smelled a beautiful perfume and I thought I was in heaven. I opened my eyes and ears and there was a beautiful nurse leaning over me. She said, 'Wakey, soldier'."I opened my eyes and I was in clean sheets and I had pyjamas on. There was this vision before me. In the bed next to me was Tom, who I'd joined up with. Mr Madeley said he was lucky he was only wounded in his leg, which nurse Elsie Parry, from Melbourne, tended. He never forgot his hospital angel but after recovering he returned to the frontline and didn't see her again until 70 years later. On a veterans' reunion trip to El Alamein in October, there was one Australian nurse. "We got talking and I said, 'What hospital were you in?'," Mr Madeley recalled. She told me she was in the Seventh AGH. I told her that was where I went and I asked her what ward she was on. She said, 'nine'. Ms Parry, now 90, recognised her old patient. Mr Madeley said: "She was looking at me and said, 'Was a friend of yours named Tom in the next bed to you?'. And I said 'yes'. She said, 'Well, I was the nurse that woke you up'. I just couldn't believe it, it was a wonderful meeting and I remember her so vividly. We had a good chat. I am still amazed we met up all those years later. Mr Madeley, who is taking part in one of the Sydney Anzac parades on Thursday, said he used the march as a chance to remember his old comrades. "I can see the other fellas when I march," he said. It's good to remember. I feel if I don't do something I'm forgetting all those mates. There are only three members from the original Rats of Tobruk taking part in the parade this year.