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. W---------
W------ was a bit slow or perhaps "not as quick as he could be” but he meant well and in 1939 with a rush of patriotism joined the local territorial unit the 324th coy 31st S/L batn
(6th City of London Rifles) Royal Engineers T.A. ( I was in the same unit having joined in 1938 on my 15th birthday by putting my age up)
W------- and I were on a searchlight site in the autumn of 1940 that was roughly half way between London and the south coast approximately at the junction of Kent Surrey and Sussex. The site was known as “The Pigs”( being next door to a piggery) My job as a L/Cpl. was 2i/c of the detachment,controlling the sound locator and the AA Lewis gun. The equipment we had was originally designed in the 14-18 war which may have been fairly effective against Zeppelins and Gotha bombers in 1918 but was not very effective against Dorniers and Hienkels in 1940 The site was in a night fighter zone, unfortunately, our illumination rate was about 1% and the night fighters if operating at all were usually slower than the bombers. The kill rate was pretty low.
Anyway W------- and Tubby were manning the sound locator and I was directing the searchlight. At about 2am with a heavy raid on London there was a short spell when the Germans stopped for a coffee break and there were no aircraft about. W------ suddenly turned to me and said “I’ve gotta go” so I said well W-------- “If you’ve gotta go you’ve gotta go but don’t take a comic”. The loo was about 100 yards away shaped like a sentry box with corrugated iron on one side and front,presumably, not to embarrass the cows( or keep the wind off).I should add there were no lights or moon except for the glow of the dock fires in London.
A few minutes later the first bomber of the next wave came over and presumably seeing the AA fire over London decided to go for his secondary target. We were convinced was an area marked “camp” in old English on ordnance survey maps indicating a historical site, unfortunately, this was exactly the location of the “Pigs” S/L site.He unloaded a stick of bombs including a basket of about 200 2 kilogramme incendiary bombs on us Fortunately the H,E,bombs fell in open fields but the incendiaries fell across the site which kept us very busy dumping sandbags on them to put them out. Suddenly somebody shouted “Where’s W------?” everybody having forgotten about him in the confusion. Looking around us we saw a glow from the loo. “My God W-------!” Three of us rushed up there and on rounding the corner there was W--------illuminated by the lurid light of an incendiary bomb, standing on the seat with his trousers around his ankles screaming for help with the incendiary bomb burning where his feet should have been, Unfortunately this appeared so funny that we all fell about laughing.Which of course set W------off and he started abusing us and shouting “Get me out of here you lousy bastards etc etc.” Fortunately one of us came to our senses and dumped a sandbag on the bomb.”All right W------ you can come out now” “but I can’t move my legs” “Pull your bloody trousers up then W------” “I can’t it might go off when I bend down” “you’ll be a bloody sight worse if it goes off with your trousers down” Anyway he wouldn’t move, so, dumping two more sandbags on the bomb (we were equally scared that it might go off) Two of us went in and pulled up W------’s trousers then with great difficulty we managed to get W------ out of his predicament. Although we got him into bed with a cup of tea (there was nothing stronger), poor W------ was shattered. We sent him back to HQ the next morning on the ration truck and that was pretty well the last we saw of W-------. Although we did hear that it took the M.O several days and a number of pills to get W------ to go. I often wonder,even today, what happened to W------who may have been one of the early casualties of what is now known as” Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome”.After 60 odd years I wtll probably never know.

Note:- the two kilogramme incendiary bomb had a small charge
under the sheet metal tail fin to either spread the fire or incapacitate anybody trying to put it out. One usually approached them with a sandbag in front of you covering your vital parts

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