大象传媒

This story has been transcribed and submitted to the site by Jemma Bellingham on behalf of Burt Price. He understands the sites terms and conditions.

"I was a member of the 25th Battalion, County of London Home Guard. While we were not actually doing any particular thing other than what we called fire patrols, we were going round and when bombs were dropping, we used to go round and put out incendiary bombs and make sure people were safe in their homes.

Anyway, we were walking along a road, Charlton Old Road it was called and then Old Dover Road, it was a road a matter of about one house width from Old Dover Road. Anyway, a landmine came down and it went off just above Old Dover Road. When it went off, the blast and bang, I said to the lads that were with me "come on lets lie down here behind this little wall". It was a wall along the front of a house garden. So we layed down behind this wall and we waited there and the mine went off with a horrific explosion, we had our hands over our ears and our helmets hard down over the back of our necks.

After it had gone off and it had quietened and the sand and tiles and pieces of brick had stopped falling, I said "ok then lads we can go now." They got up ready to go, but I couldn't get up. I said "I can't move" so they asked what the matter was. I said "I don't know but I can't move". So anyway, they came over and they sort of felt around and they told me I felt ok. I said 鈥淚 can feel my legs and my arms, I can feel my body, I鈥檓 alright". So they asked why I couldn't move and I didn't know. Anyway, they came over and they felt underneath me, and they found out what it was and they laughed. The paving stones had lifted when the mine had gone off, my battle dress blouse at the front, had gone down in the hole and then the stones had dropped again and they were holding me to the ground! I couldn't get up and there was the weight of 2 big flag stones. The lads used the shovel which they'd been using to put the sand on incendiary bombs, so they put the shovel in between the flag stones and levered them up so that I could get out again.
It was quite frightening at the time, wondering why I couldn't move!"

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