That knocking sound you can hear is one more nail in the coffin of my good intentions. I’m not sure how long it’s been since my last post, but it’s a lot longer than I meant it to be.

In that time I have written the story of Lieutenant Ken Revis MBE, the bomb disposal officer who was blinded when a group of mines went off when he was “delousing” the piers at Brighton. It’s pretty much the same story that I published here a few years ago, but I have some extra information.

It seems that the silver cigarette case I have, was not given by Lt Revis to his Sergeant, it was given by the people of Patcham. They gave a cigarette case to Sgt Woodrow and a silver cup to Revis, all the others were given silver identity discs. I suspect the gifts were dictated by what they could find locally to re-use. The book “Blinding Flash”, which I bought recently, gives the details.

The bomb fell close to a house and though it only went about twelve feet down, took four days to dig out and make safe. The aircraft that appears to have dropped it (and I confess I haven’t yet tied this up 100%) was shot down, killing all the crew. There don’t appear to have been any other planes shot down at the same time, ut as I say, I haven’t yet tied it up 100%. I may never do. But t5hen, until last week I didn’t know someone had written a biography of Lt Revis.

The men were given their gifts when they attended Patcham Church the weekend after they defused the bomb.

I’ve also done a piece on carrots in wartime. That was a nicer one to do – nobody died and nobody was injured. One or two may have turned orange, but that’s a risk you take with vegetables.  Did you know there was a plot to feed oestrogen to Hitler by injecting his carrots. No, that’s not a euphemism, the Office of Strategic Services (an American organisation that later became the CIA) developed a plan to bribe Hitler’s gardener to inject oestrogen into carrots. The plan was that he would either become a gentler person and stop the war, or that he would grow man boobs and his moustache would fall out, thus making the German people lose respect for him. It does not appear to have worked, tough when you look at the state of Herman Göring in later photos you have to wonder if he was the one nibbling the carrots.

They had a similar plan later for contaminating Castro’s boots with thallium, which would, they hoped, make his beard fall out and make him less capable of leading Cuba.

And no, carrots don’t help you see in the dark unless you are deficient in Vitamin A.