I was blown up by Hitler’s bomb but lived to tell tale (From Worcester News)

I was blown up by Hitler’s bomb but lived to tell tale

3:30pm Thursday 2nd September 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

AN 85-year-old veteran has told how he was blown up while on wartime guard duty.

Pensioner Anthony Osman was stationed in the south of England during the Second World War when he was blasted by a V1 flying bomb, the notorious retaliatory weapon used by Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the latter stages of the conflict.

The young Home Guard anti-aircraft gunner and his colleague were guarding the main gate of an army base just days after the D-day landings in June 1944 when they spotted a light in the night sky.

“The two of us were stood watching the sky to the east and we both picked out this flame,” said Mr Osman, of Pershore. “Suddenly I realised it was very much closer and was going to land on a downward flight.

“I threw myself behind the guard hut and my mate went to ground and this bomb just blew the front off the guard house.” When Mr Osman regained consciousness he had a perforated left ear drum and shrapnel in his leg.

“I remember feeling nothing at all and somebody picking me up and getting into an ambulance,” he said.

Mr Osman was taken to the Brook Military Hospital in Greenwich dressed in ‘blues’ – the uniform given to injured men which consisted of a white shirt, red tie, blue jacket and trousers.

Mr Osman said: “While I was there I remember seeing a demonstration by a one-armed snooker player who used an upturned scrubbing brush, bristles up, as a rest, bracing the cue in the armpit of his missing arm.”

Unfortunately, his ear injury went septic. “The doctor syringed my ear with fluid, and it was a shock to us both when the fluid spurted out of my nose,” said Mr Osman.

But Mr Osman, of Bridge Street, said when he was returned to his unit he was sure nobody believed him so he just carried on.

“The V1s would fly on a pre-determined course, and you could hear them,” he said.

“But with the V2 bombs which came later, you heard them fly over or you heard nothing – which usually meant you were dead from the blast.”

The retired factory manager, formerly of Ledbury, moved to Pershore after his retirement.

l The V1 ‘Buzz Bomb’ – Vergeltungswaffe 1, retaliation weapon – also colloquially known in Britain as the ‘doodle bug’, was an early pulse jet-powered example of what would later be called a cruise missile. About 8,000 were launched at Britain. The V1 was developed at Peenemünde Airfield, eventually bombed by the Allies.