I had to laugh at parts of the obituary of the late Lieutenant-Colonel Cliff Green.
He enlisted in the Army in 1939, and the following year was commissioned into 718 General Construction CO. He was sent to RAF Manby on what he believed was going to be an armaments course. There they were greeted by the instructor: “Good morning, gentlemen. Welcome to Bomb Disposal Course Number 1 – or, to put it differently, what goes up must come down.”
On inquiring of a senior officer why it was that newly-commissioned men were selected for this work, he was told that experienced regimental officers had received long and expensive training and were not to be hazarded on jobs where the life expectancy of operators was about 10 weeks.
There's more at the link.
I bet that response made him feel all loved and appreciated . . .
Peter
The Army trained my dad to defuse Japanese ordnance.
ReplyDeleteI'm thankful that the atomic bombs ended that war before the fall invasion.
I loved the BBC series "Danger: UXB" (shown here on PBS, back in the 1980s. A nasty business.
ReplyDelete