大象传媒

I signed up in 1939 at the age of 17, and volunteered for bomb disposal in 1940 because they found out I was too young to go to France. So I went to Haywards Heath, Sussex and was put straight onto the bombs with no training. You started with 6 men in stages as you dug down to find the bomb - the depth depending on the soil. If the bomb exploded it would kill all the bomb disposal men - as many as 10 men.
My officer, Lieutenant Brevis, was a great officer. He was a civil engineer before the war and got the OBE but he really deserved the George Medal or the George Cross. We were together after the war but he was blinded when clearing mines on Brighton Pier in 1943. Because he was a civil engineer he knew exactly what to do with bomb disoposal. There was one bomb in Southwick, which we dug 40 feet for but couldn't find. So we dug another shaft, and another after that. On the third shaft we finally located the bomb - 40 feet below the surface next to our shaft. Liuetnant Brevis managed to move the bomb into the shaft and get it to be pulled by the Derrick cranes. Luckily it was an impact bomb, a safe bomb.
The Germans also had time bombs which had up to 82 hours to explode which were dangerous because they could explode even on the lorry after it had been dug up. Once the bombs had been discoved they were taken to a safe area and blown up but a few times the bomb could explode before this. If the bomb was ticking then it would go off very soon and we would have to evacuate. All the bomb disposal men were not afraid, but would joke about it. We were all pretty normal, not depressed. We all went to the pub in Sussex to meet up with the land girls - one of whom I eventually married and have been with her now for 59 years.
We had no breaks or leave for three years - there were too many bombs. As I joined, the man said "Thank God you're coming, we just had seven blown up".
There were no more bombs after 1943 and I went to work with mines on the south coast. The saddest moment of my life was on Brighton beach. We were having tea and one man was still on the detector on the beach. He started shouting, which was not allowed. Usually only one man was sent out so only one man was in danger if a mine went off. Sergent Todd, a great sergent, was so mad about the shouting and started to going down towards him. As he was going down, the fellow on the beach stepped either backward or forward and a mine went up. He was killed and Sergent Todd was blinded. I could not recognse him in the hospital - it firghtened me because he had no eyes at all and his jet black hair had gone white. "Why didn't I do down futher, then I would have been killed" he said to me. Brevis told me later that Sergent Todd had committed suicide.
In Brackasham Bay, we were at the mine field but we couldn't get the detector over because of the grass and weeds. Brevis got a tank of petrol and poured it over the field and set fire to it. The fire wouldn't set the mines off but would clear it for us. At the end of the day, with the field clear of mines, Brevis need a man to stay and I knew he would ask me to stay behind after the fire in case it started up again and I was scared in case one mine had been left. There was a deadly feeling - everything was black because of the fire. So I edged back further and further, but of course nothing happened.
I was demobed in 1946, I used to meet old friends from the bomb desposal unit after the war but I appear to be on the only man left now.

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