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There are danger points in many peoples lives, whether in peace time or war time. Sometimes it can be something quite simple that can cause a death or save a life, and I would not be here if it had not been for a kind turn of fate. For my father and I, it was a branch of a tree, no thicker than about three inches in diameter.

Most households were supplied with what was called a stirrup pump, for putting out fires and incendiary bombs. It was quite simply a pump you put into a full bucket of water with a handle and a stabiliser, attached to which was a length of garden hose about six feet long with an adjustable nozzle at the end, rather like a simple garden hose today. Local air raid wardens gave demonstrations as to how it was to be used and advised that it was the best for one person to pump while the other used the spray. As it was in the days before most people had long garden hoses fitted to taps, and the method of watering a garden was by filling a watering can from a water butt, you can imagine the stirrup pump became a very useful garden implement. I had a lot of practise with it, willingly pumping away while dad sprayed the garden vegetables.

During one raid, incendiary bombs dropped all around the area and two landed in the garden not ten feet from the garden shed, which was near the shelter. It was important to put out incendiary bombs as quickly as possible, not only because of the fire they might start but because the leading aircraft sometimes called ‘pathfinders’, would pin point a target by lighting it up with incendiaries, for the following aircraft to aim at with their high explosives. I don’t think we knew at the time, but we certainly found out later, that with some cluster of incendiary bombs, the Germans put an explosive one that had a delayed fuse. The intention was that this incendiary would go unnoticed, and explode later when people were putting the others out. My father and I got the stirrup pump and a bucket of water and got into the gap between the side of the hedge and the shed, so that my father could spray around the corner of the shed, exposing as little as possible of his body. When the incendiaries had died down sufficiently, including the burning grass, my father used several sandbags to do the final dowsing. We then went back into the shelter. The following morning we went up the garden to look at the incendiaries, also to collect fins. So often these fins remained fairly intact, and it was quite a pastime to collect them, clean them up and paint them. The ring at the end of the fins made a stand and when painted and decorated, they made a very good small receptacle for dry flowers.

While we were raking the fins out of the burnt up area my father noticed that a small branch of an elm tree, that over hung the gap between the shed and the hedge where we had been the night before, was broken and half hanging off. Not an unexpected sight, for so often shrapnel from anti-aircraft shells fell in great quantities, sometimes-damaging roof tiles, green houses, and many other things in spite of the fact that most pieces were quite small. The biggest piece I ever found would be no more than an about half a pound in weight. We went to see what had torn off the branch, and there sticking out of the ground, only a few feet behind where I had been standing pumping with my father was an incendiary bomb half buried upside down, fins first, so one was seeing the flat faced nose on which was a letter ‘A’ written in red, if I remember. Some expert today could possibly verify this. My father reported it, and when the bomb disposal man came, he confirmed that it was one of those explosive incendiaries that had not detonated because it had hit the branch, my father and I, most likely would have been blown up from behind while putting the others out. When the bomb disposal man explained this to my father, I remember him looking up to heaven, and then giving me a great big hug. One of those moments in life one will never forget.

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