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This Story was sent to us by Neville Hounslow from Blackburn, Lancashire.

My father, Who was in the air force during the war, had already got wise to the idea that if you were selective in what you volunteered for you could keep away from trouble or any thing that was risky.

So when a notice appeared asking for people to train in demolition, he, thinking it would be about knocking buildings down, put his name forwards. He didn’t realise that the training would be in explosives and booby trap demolition, or setting charges to destroy something to prevent it coming into enemy hands. Being the man he was he didn’t complain, and duly qualified as an explosives demolition expert.

Much later, after being posted to Italy, it became his job to set charges on a fleet of three radar vans. These then would be driven over the Alps to the next base, one at a time, with my father riding with the driver as he was the only person who could fire the charges if there was a threat of capture by the enemy. The first van (about the size of a removals van) got over the passes safely. My father and the driver were then taken back by car for the next and so on. It was on the last journey, as they were going up a steep zigzag road up a mountainside, that they spotted way below them a German bomber coming up the valley from in front. They stopped the van, got out and ran several yards off to one side and laid down in a ditch. The tail gunner in the bomber had seen the van so fired a burst up at the van from below. My father was praying that the explosives wouldn’t be hit, and this proved the case, as his prayers were answered. However there was a line of bullet holes all along the side of the van with exit holes in the roof, the only damage done was one electronic valve smashed. As he said, it was the only time that a plane had shot at something on the ground from below it, as far as he knew.

When they got back in and drove it to its destination they were met with great incredulity at how they had survived.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Merseyside’s People’s War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his/ her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.’

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