As we mark remembrance across the country this week, GB News has been finding out the stories of veterans from across the UK. This special series continues today with the story of Bomber Command veteran Bert Hammond.
“My name is Bertram Hammond. I was called up and I reported at Lord’s Cricket ground. I was there for three weeks. I went from Bridgnorth to the Air Gunnery school at Morpeth, near Newcastle.
“Then we were transferred to 514 Squadron itself with the first harp was a medium sort of chip. You know the short shorts, we’d call them.
“You go in and you look on the board to where that ribbon goes and where that ribbon ends is your target. It was hell, sometimes. I still wonder how we got through some of those.
“You get out of that, and you’re on the long trip home and still looking for the fighters. There was a long trip going over the North Sea. That was the only occasion I said to myself, I hope I see it on my way back. I never thought like that.
“And as I got further on the ship, I said to myself, what the heck am I doing here?
“That’s the only time I ever thought about not returning. I just accept, if it could be our turn one day.
“We come back and we got to bed about six in the morning, and when we got in our barrack room, there’s a new crew coming. Instead of getting much sleep, they wanted to know all about it, you see, naturally.
“We woke up the next morning and that crew hadn’t survived. That was our first stop.
“I always kiss the door as I come out, because my contention when you went into that door, it was to the unknown. And when you come back, you’d return from the unknown.
“Being one of the few air crew veterans what are left. I do have in my mind a kind of duty to those what never came back. I met as a crew, seven total strangers thrown together as a crew became closer than blood brothers. That’s how I put it.
“I would never have missed it for the world. I would have done the same thing again. Just remember what it was all about and what it was for.
“It was a freedom. Freedom. What we enjoy today.”
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