What was the worst thing that happened to you during the war?

I was almost killed one night in a Wellington bomber and you won’t believe what happened .We had a quiet trip and we were coming back and when you’re landing the most difficult part for the pilot is to land a plane because he’s tired and he’s been flying for 72 hours and the crew’s tired .The weather was bad and this Wellington bomber had a toilet and you only go to the toilet if necessary and it was right behind the main spar in the Wellington bomber. It was a big girder about the size of the table and that takes the whole weight off the wings. Right behind it is this chemical toilet and I was using it during the flight and the toilet had a seat, a lid and a little pin hinge. What happened was the pin must have come out and the toilet seat vibrated and slipped down the side of the plane.

Along side of the Wellington bomber was the aluminum rod which operated the controls and when we were coming to land about 5 or 6 hundred feet. The funnels were lights that guided the plane onto the runway and the pilot suddenly said to the bombardier who was assisting him to land, ‘For god sake Bob get your hands of the controls and your feet of the controls.’ because there was two sets of controls. He said,’ I’m not touching them.’ The pilots found out the controls were locked. and He couldn’t get it up and the wing was dropping and he couldn’t get the wing up and that meant if we went in a ball of fire the plane would somersault and you know, the worst thing a pilot could do in a landing is shut off the port engine. The right wing was down we were coming in and we were listening in our headsets to the pilot talking. “Come and help me Bob”, who was the bombardier. They were cursing and swearing trying to get the wing up. It wasn’t going to come up. For eight or nine seconds we had a terrible thought of what was going to happen to us. We are going to die, we are going to be killed there’s no doubt about that. The wing was down like that, and you know what he did? He shut off the port engine and the left wing lost power and it came down. We got on the run way, right along the run way and off the end of it. But we came down in one piece. I was the smallest of the crew so they said see what you can find that’s blocking the controls- and we found the seat of the Nelson toilet jammed hard against the controls and the next day the ground staff took the seat of the Nelson toilet and put nails in it and hung it up above our huts to remind us of the Nelson toilet that almost killed five men on a cold dark night in England.

And that was the story of the Nelson Toilet.