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This story has been entered onto the site by Craig on behalf of John McMenemy and they fully understand the conditions.

鈥淚 joined the RAF on the 5th March 1941. After my RAF training I was posted to an RAF station in Shawbury. He was there for about six weeks and I worked there as a crash tender on an airfield. Shortly after that I was posted to a dummy airfield. It was my job to try to distract enemy bombers from bombing real airfields by using lights and flares, and making it seem as if it was real. I used to work at night using flares to try to make it seem that the airfield was on fire and to try to make the enemy bombers come there. This was at a site called Q72. I also used to make it look like towns were on fire. I worked there for 2 years, until it closed down after the air raids.

I was then sent to Blackpool to train as a dispatch rider. After my training I was posted to a bomb dump near Burton on Trent. There I worked on an underground magazine where empty bombshells were filled with explosives. I then got a job as a dispatch rider, delivering secret documents to several airfields and bomb dumps. After a while, I was posted away from the bomb dump to Severn Oaks, along with lots of other foremen. I worked as a member of a disarmament unit where I used to dispose of bombs and airfields and make them safe. Shortly after I left the bomb dump there was a large explosion there, which killed a lot of people, but fortunately for me I had just recently left.

I was sent with a unit of people from Severn Oaks over the sea to France, and from there I drove to Belgium, and after the war I went to Harlem and Rotterdam. It was my job to collect mail in Belgium, Holland and Germany. I was stationed in Lunenburg until I was demobilised. During my time in Germany I drove jeeps and water carriers and 5 tonne lorries. During my time in Belgium, the Germans used to send Doodlebug and V2 bombs, which were so powerful they could blow up a whole street.

Once, when I was in the RAF, I was pulled by the police for riding two people on a bike. There was no public transport in the area and that was the easiest way to get around. For that I was fined 5 shillings!

One time when I was in Rotterdam, one of the officers I was working with asked me and some other people to go with him on a fishing trip to a nearby lake. The second time we pulled the net out of the water there was a mine right in the middle of it! Luckily we could get it out of the water and disarm it, but sadly we lost our catch!

One day when I was driving a jeep through Germany and a few American soldiers asked if they could get a lift to some small town. Since there wasn鈥檛 any room in the front, they had to go in the back of the truck. When the soldiers were getting off the back of the truck one of the man鈥檚 fingers got caught in the chain which was used to lift the tailgate. Since the chain was moving, it accidentally cut off the man鈥檚 finger, so we had to get him back in the van and rush him straight to the nearest hospital!鈥�

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