大象传媒

My late father joined up early in the war so that he could choose which service he was in - he chose the RAF.
He was not pilot material, so he was eventually given the choice of becoming a rear-gunner in Lancaster bombers or joining the RAF Regiment. He told me he had hosed too many rear-gunners out of their cockpits to want to take the risk - the life expectancy was very short as they tended to be the first target for enemy fighters - so he chose the regiment.
In the whole of the war he never flew; he trained on landing-craft in preparation for landing in Normandy on the second day of the invasion. His job was to prepare and defend forward airfields to enable troops and supplies to be flown to the front. At one point they were surrounded by fighting and could hear the guns; they thought the Germans would be attacking the airfield at any time, but the attack never came.
He claimed that he never saw a German soldier until he arrived in Berlin. He also said that the only plane his gun-crew ever shot down was one of their own; it came in low out of the fog and was off course for the runway so they opened fire. Luckily, the pilot escaped unhurt!

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