大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War by a volunteer from Lincoln CSV Action Desk on behalf of Ron Howe and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Howe fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I joined the armed forces as soon as I could to get away from the discipline that was in place at home.

I really wanted to join the Royal Navy but the recruiting sergeant told me that 鈥淭he Navy is full son, but I鈥檓 sure you will get on well in the RAF鈥�. So I joined the RAF and soon settled into the military routine and was intrigued enough to volunteer to join a new branch of the RAF just being formed. This was to be called the RAF Bomb Disposal Unit. IT would seem that during and after the 1914-18 war and in 1940 that the ordinance branch of the army was responsible for dealing with all unexploded devises but when the bombing started in Britain the army experts were overwhelmed hence the formation of groups such as I now found myself in.

We spent a few weeks having the usual lectures explaining how to defuse all the known devices. (At the same time the Germans were working on ideas of how to make things more dangerous to defuse). We then practised dismantling dummy devices for a short time before being sent out to a unit that could be operating anywhere in any part of the country.

The tools of the trade you soon found out were very basic, you were issued with a shovel, a pickaxe, and 6 empty sand bags. With these items plus your note book with the information on how to deal with unexploded devices you were let loose on the unsuspecting public! Most of the incidents you were called out to were unexploded bombs and all you would see at the scene would be a hole, which was sometimes quite deep. If you were lucky, on peering down the hole you might just see part of the crumpled fins that were on top of the bomb. You were expected to use your pickaxe and shovel to dig around the bomb thus exposing the trigger. One bit of advice I was given was to place the 6 sand bags, b now filled with sand or garden earth, on top of the device and then send for a more experienced expert. Now these were few and far between so eventually you would decide to put your theory into practise. Often I would use the wheel barrow to take the diffused device away somewhere safer for detonation, using the filled sand bags as a cushion.

At the start of this job we were responsible for obtaining some kind of fear to lift the bomb out of its hole and then arrange transport to remove it to another place where it could be detonated safely. Not an easy task at the best of times but thankfully the organisation got better as time went on.

Because of the long hours of duty you often went to sleep in the back of the lorry taking you to the next device which could be miles away and on one occasion I found myself in Liverpool where the bomb was located directly under some metal stairs which lead up to an overhead railway system.

After being assured that the area around the device was clear on any members of the public I got up close to the bomb and started my, by now, well tried routine to disarm the bomb when suddenly I could hear a funny clonking sound coming from above me. I stopped what I was doing and on surfacing saw hundreds of Dockers walking along the street and queuing up on metal stairs waiting for the first train in to work! I tried to explain to the ones closest to me that there was supposed to be a safety area around the bomb but no one would move away. They just wanted to get on the train and get to work to keep the war effort going.

Because I was smaller, (they used to call me titch), and thinner than a lot of my bomb disposal mates, I was picked out and asked to volunteer to fly out to Malta and then be put aboard the tanker 鈥淥hio鈥� which was the last tanker afloat in Operation Pedestal and with which they were hoping to relieve Malta. I was told that luckily the bomb was on the upper deck of the tanker but the down side was that a German bomber had crashed on top of the bomb and only someone like me could get into the space left underneath. I eventually managed to disarm the bomb and after spending a few hours in Malta was flown back to England.

Towards the end of the war we used to diffuse devices and then move on to the next one, the device being taken out of the hole it was resting in by a gang of airmen in a truck that had a crane in it. A sergeant and I were diffusing some bombs in a wood near to Lakenheath the American air base. Having taken out the triggers we were going to move onto the next job, the hole that the bomb was in was quite deep so to get out of the hole the sergeant suggested that he would stand on my shoulders and then pull himself out after which he would help me out with the tools. Usually the blokes doing the bomb removal came along after we had moved on but this time they drove up and started to drop the hook of the crane. I heard the sergeant shout 鈥淒on鈥檛 touch that!!鈥� I heard a loud bang and the next thing that I remember is waking up in the hospital. I was told that my hearing had been damaged and that the sergeant was dead. I was discharged from the RAF shortly afterwards.

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