look told us all. We immediately started up our ambulance, loaded him onto a stretcher, and with our Medical Orderly tending him, took him, warning bell ringing, to the local hospital in Meppen. The Krankenhaus was run by Nuns, with one doctor present who fortunately spoke a little English. The patient was stretchered indoors and I was bidden to follow. There, without anaesthetic, Herr Doktor pulled out a huge piece of shrapnel from the man's thigh. I nearly passed out, and quickly moved away. I explained to the doctor what had happened and the Polizei were informed. We reclaimed our stretcher and blanket, and our job was finished.
The large vegetable allotment was close to our buildings and received almost constant attention. Someone would be weeding, removing Colorado beetles from the potato plants, or doing some other seasonal task. One Airman was digging and struck metal. He called me and I went to investigate. It was apparent that he had found some Bazooka (or similar) bombs. They were dangerously close to the buildings. Action had to be taken. Foolishly, rather than inform Oldenburg, and call out a Bomb Disposal Unit (which would have meant our temporary evacuation), I took the matter into my own hands. After ensuring that all personnel were a distance away, I carefully dug round the offending objects and was able to hook a garden fork through the fins of the three of them at the same time. Even more carefully, I raised them out of the shallow hole and carried them to what I judged to be a safe distance away into some trees, and carefully lowered them into a hollow in the ground. Problem solved. I had got away with it.
Near that spot were trenches; in them were Wehrmacht helmets and water bottles with bullet holes through them, and several heavily rusted small arms - clearly the scene of a wartime firefight.
One of the afternoons turned out to be very hot. There was no flying scheduled for the range site, so there was no point in going there. In the distance across the scrubland were several minor tornadoes or dust devils sucking the dust up to several hundred feet. They were worth a minute or two to watch. Then one came close, and came closer. Suddenly I found myself clinging hard to a roof column of the porch of the main building to prevent being taken up in the air to join a couple of dust bins already high in the column of swirling dust and debris. I felt as though my uniform was being torn from me. Grit was in my eyes, and I was hanging on for dear life. Then it was all over. No damage was done to the buildings, only to my pride. The Airmen had dashed for cover and I was the only one caught out. The dust bins were retrieved, empty. My cap, torn off by the wind, was later found a couple of hundred yards away, deposited and filthy, in the centre of the entrance lane.
The actual firing range was several kilometers north of the domestic site and on part of the same extensive heath. To get to it took about 20 minutes drive and one passed through the hamlet of Lathen, and crossed over the dry and abandoned workings of what would later become a new Dortmund-Ems canal before seeing first the Range Safety Tower and then the targets. Apart from the wooden Tower there were only a small toilet block, a store building for target materials, and a vehicle hard-standing on the site. It was a desolate place. On firing days we took the ambulance, a truck and the Landrover. Firing schedules were notified to us at the domestic site in advance. It was my duty to man the R/T and to make sure that the range was safe before, during, and after each firing practice. This included the raising and lowering of red flags and posting a guard on the approach lane.
The two firing sessions, one on the Monday and the other on the Thursday, each lasted no more than half a day and both were with Sabre aircraft. No rockets hit any of the 10 feet square targets although there were some pretty good near misses. I called the aircraft down to fire and then reported the results from the radio in the Tower. A log was kept of the call-signs, number of rockets fired, and the results of
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