大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Brighton on behalf of Derrick Hull and has been added to the site with his permission. Derrick Hull fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1942 Derrick Hull was ground crew in the Middle East for the 600 squadron. His job was to service the aeroplanes' instruments.

At the airfield where he was working a squadron of Wellington Bombers were fuelled up and full of bombs, ready to go.

Derrick was just running across the runway when he saw a plane with flares burning trying to come in to land. The plane came down but it could not avoid the bombers standing on the runway. It crashed into the first Wellington and then the others exploded in turn.

Derrick threw himself behind a blockbuster bomb and then ran to a sandbag pen (that usually held planes) and waited there until the fire subsided.

He said that at the time it all seemed part of daily life, but in the end he felt he was very lucky he had no physical injuries, just a "memory scratch."

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