You are saying he must be right on that point.
In order to determine if he was right one has to look at all the evidence. Nellie said he was turned. He told Dr. Shires that he was turned to the right. Nellie said that she turned to look at JFK after the first shot and never looked back after the second shot. She is turned looking back at JFK until z268. Greer said that he turned around immediately after the second shot. He does not turn until z278-280. Over 40 witnesses gave evidence that the second and third shots were in rapid succession, closer together than 1 and 2, which puts the second shot well after z235, which is the last time JBC faced forward. So there is an awful lot of evidence that his recollection in April 1964 that he was facing forward when hit by the second shot was not correct.
It may be that he thought he was facing forward because he had turned as far to his right and saw that JFK had moved left and just decided to turn to his left when he was hit. So rather than an actual recollection of where he was facing, he was reconstructing it in his mind and thought he had turned because that is what he was trying to do. Once he was hit he was in shock and had other things on his mind.
I figure that the guy who best knows what Gov. Connally was doing when he was shot is Gov. Connally, his other experiences notwithstanding. That being said, how can you say, "we can't rely on what Connally tells us" then turn around and tell us that we should instead pay heed to what Tom Shires said that Connally said? If Connally isn't reliable, then Connally-via-Shires would be even less so!
So let's run down what the various players said between the assassination and the Warren Commision hearings. I'm using semicolons to separate different events in sequence, according to each instance of testimony:
John Connally/Agronsky: Heard a shot; turned to his left; as he turned, he was hit; said "My God, they're going to kill us all"; Kennedy hit again
John Connally/WC: Heard a shot; turned to his right; was turning back to the left; was hit in the left turn while facing forwards; said "Oh, no, no, no", then "My God, they're going to kill us all"; "doubled up" and turned to his right; was pulled into his wife's lap; Kennedy hit again
Nellie Connally/WC: "heard a noise"; turned to her right, saw JFK with his hands up at the same time her husband said "Oh, no, no, no"; "there was a second shot*"; "he recoiled to the right" and "looked away from me" while saying "My God, they're going to kill us all"; she pulled him into her lap; Kennedy hit again
Shires/WC: "She had thought, and I think correctly so, that he had turned to his right after he heard the first shot, apparently, to see what had happened to the President, and he then later confirmed this, that he heard the first shot, turned to his right, and then was hit. I forgot about that a moment ago, incidentally. He definitely remembers turning after hearing the first shot, before he was struck with a bullet.
I forgot about that."
What Shires recalled is perfectly consistent with what Connally told the Commission.
The "shot-while-turning-left" memory appears during the Agronsky interview, which was only a few days after the assassination. In fact, that interview was conducted while Connally was still in his hospital bed. It short-sheets anything Shires recalled later to the WC. And it remained in the Governor's testimony until he died. That tells me it's a core memory of the event in his mind. He and Nellie also both agreed that he turned right
as a reaction to being shot. The shot-while-turning-left recollection and the right-turn-as-reaction memory put a constraint on when he could have been hit. He turns left beginning about frame 195 and doesn't start to noticeably "recoil to the right"until after frame 235.
