大象传媒

A strange thing happened one day. The Commanding Officer received a message telling him we were to be bombed that afternoon. He issued instructions for every man on the unit to dig a slit trench, an order with which everyone complied. I imagined our Secret Service must know where the bombers of a particular German squadron were going to operate. The message was taken seriously. Some members of the squadron who were not on duty drove away into the desert to await the result. I was the only photographer, so I was on duty. True to the message, the Germans arrived in the afternoon. I nipped in a slit trench, hugging my precious camera. I looked up into the sky and could see one particular Heinkel III heading in my direction. My eyes seemed to be riveted on this one and he was losing height quite rapidly and getting closer, lower and lower. I could now clearly see the bomb-aimer in the nose and could almost have shaken hands! He released the bombs, one hit the ground about ten feet from my trench. Fortunately, he was so low that the bomb, an anti-personnel one, which was so designed to explode in the air releasing about twenty bombs, which as they travel to the earth open their fins to be sure of it arriving nose first. On impact they fragment into many pieces of shrapnel hoping to maim or kill airmen on the ground. This bomb released too near the ground. It hadn鈥檛 enough time to open and release the twenty odd bombs it contained. Consequently, the bomb hit the ground at an angle and slid to a halt near me. Something inside me said, you had better have a quick picture of the bomb, so out of the slit trench, a quick focus and I had a photograph at close range. Funnily enough, I never gave a thought about it exploding. When the raiders had disappeared, the bomb was fenced off. These bombings didn鈥檛 worry me too much, probably because I belonged to those who believed that if your name is on it, you鈥檝e had it, so why worry? It may never happen.

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