Tonbridge man fell from 18,000 feet....

A very spritely 88 year old man came into my shop to order a book the other day. It was a book about airmen in the Second World War so, quite understandably, we got talking about the war. This old man wasn't boasting when he told me his experience in 1944 when he was aged 20, in fact I had to gently persaude him to tell me. He was shot down over Germany. The pilot and co pilot were both killed sitting right next to him by the canon fire which had disabled the aircraft so he told me. Then he said he couldn't remember the next few moments as he thinks there was an explosion of some kind on the plane. The next thing he remembers is coming round from his unconscious state and realising that he had fallen half way down from 18,000 feet! He pulled his ripcord, spent the next year in a POW camp and most of the next 50 as an upholsterer in Tonbridge. I won't name him but what a remarkable story. To have lived the last nearly 70 years having been that close to certain death must be an amazing feeling. I salute those men who still walk among us having had these incredible experiences so early in their adult lives. I also can't help feeling more than a little envious of that level of exitement which so many old war vets have spoken of. But, of course, they are just the lucky ones who survived....