大象传媒

When I was born my dad, Arthur Lawton, was in the Royal Artillary, the Gloucesters, as a regular, until 1933. We lived in Filton Avenue then. When the war started he re-enlisted on 6th September, 1939, and they put him in a Bomb Disposal Company, Royal Engineers. They made him up to Sergeant, and he worked all round Newcastle digging these bombs up and making them safe, and he received a highly commended certificate. This was because he drove a bomb which they could not detonate, out of town on the back of a lorry, to a nearby beach, and blew the lorry up with the bomb.

Every now and again we would be in bed, and we'd hear voices. Dad would come down south to learn about new bombs that were coming out, and how to defuse them. He would stop off home in Filton for the night and then go back up to Newcastle.

Every night we used to phone up Newcastle and speak to dad, and one time mother was worried about him because he wasn't there, he'd gone missing. So she got on the train and went up there and she found him in hospital, one of the bombs had gone off. At any rate, he went on working'

Dad used to say that you had to follow the bomb down and work out which way it had gone - it often went off at an angle. If a bomb had gone through a house it dragged behind it furniture; sideboards, piano and all sorts, and they had to dig it all out before they came to the bomb'.

The Bristol Evening Post interviewed Arthur Lawton on 7th February, 1979. He told them that some bombs were buried as much as 25 feet below the surface, and described it as 'dirty, mucky work'. At first they had handled the bombs casually, simply dumping them in piles, but soon they realised that they were being booby-trapped, with, for instance, delayed action mechanisms and 'trembler' devices, which were sensitive. New techniques had to be developed, at the cost of several close shaves, and sometimes loss of life.

The bomb disposal group lived an exhausing, hand-to-mouth existence, eating and sleeping whenever and wherever they could, even for instance in police cells, and often four hours' sleep was as much as they got. The digging and hoisting equipment they had was often not enough, and they had to borrow from local contractors.

Once they had dug down to the bomb they had to find out how it worked - each one had to be treated differently, and you needed a clear mind. If you were afraid there was a risk of making a mistake.

There were many different bomb types, for instance, they started coming down by parachute, hanging from trees, and even church spires, and because they weighed over a ton, they were quite a problem to get down. The butterfly bombs were the most dangerous, being so sensitive that they could not be disarmed, and had to be blown up.

Normally the Bomb Disposal Officer did the final disarming, but there were so many bombs in the North East that Sgt. Lawton and the officer had to share the responsibility between them.

Gerald takes up the tale again. 'Dad was stationed at Newcastle, and worked all round this area, Sunderland, and down the coast. Towards the end of the war they were on the coast because all the sand had been laid with mines, and so they had to defuse them. Sometimes they had to deal with mines that came in from the sea.

Dad was lucky to serve right through the war, because most of his men were killed'.

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