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This story is a list of un-believable suprises? I had been posted to a R.A.F, station work-shops that was host to a Polish Fighter training school; however I was granted permission to hold a sleeping-out pass which improved the situation. My next suprise was be told to report to the Armoury for my weapons. The first item was my PIKE, this was a six-foot council brush stale, into which the joiners had driven a eight inch long nail that was ground down to pub dart point. The next item was a bigger suprise, I was pointed in the direction of several Waff's sat at sewing machines. The first one machined a strip of green webbing into a long tube, the second proceeded to fill this with several pounds of air-gun pellets and then machined the top closed, the third completed a neat job by machining and attaching a very secure wrist strap. This was my truncheon and I was asked to sign for both items. Before I left I was reminded I was due to be shown both the Mobile Gun and the perimier defences against air-bourn attacks. The Mobile was from a local breakers yard, it was a ex coal merchants flat truck on which a double wall of corrugated iron sheets had been shaped into a square and filled with sand-bags. The mounting for the 303 machine-gun was a flanged pipe securely bolted to the floor. I was still getting settled when the visit to the outer defences was arranged and this made my day. We left camp and were taken to a small wood which over looked what was described as a ideal dropping zone for Paratroopers, I had already noticed strange attachments to the tallest of the poplar trees, car inner tubes looped in daisey-chain fashion to form what I can only describe as a very large catapult, which, if properly loaded would shower the area with deadly shrapnel from the old ammo boxes that were to be used for dischargers. You will by now know why my story title was "with fingers crossed". At this point I was being given more night duties than the hours spent in the work-shop doing the work I had been posted to do. It was now that I decided that I would volunteer for Air-crew duties.

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