When I got engaged to Donald some of his colleagues said ‘I hope you’ve got strong nerves – he’s very accident prone.’ Fortunately most of his accidents were over by that time. Some he told me about, some I learned about through the BBC. He joined the Territorial Army before the 1939 – 45 war, foreseeing trouble with Hitler. His skull was first fractured when a beam, supporting the blackout over the windows in his barracks fell on him. He was given a year’ sick leave by the army. So he joined the BBC’s newly formed Defence Force. One day he was called to the third floor to see what he realised was an unexploded bomb. He told everyone NOT TO TOUCH IT, phoned the bomb disposal unit, then, starting at the eighth floor, cleared all the offices, sending people down to the lower ground floor NOT by the lift. He’d just got back to the third floor when he realised that the bomb had been moved and was ticking. At that moment it went off. He came to in hospital with a fractured skull again. Eventually, he recovered enough to walk again, though badly.

The BBC had a Rest House in the country to which it sent invalids, including Donald, to recuperate. One night there was a very big raid on Coventry when the German planes all flew directly overhead. On their way home one straggler dropped his bombs on them. Donald had climbed on a shed to see what was happening and was blown off. I think that was the occasion when he landed up in a RAF field hospital where there was a wonderful surgeon, Archibald McIndoe. McIndoe was later knighted for the wonderful work he did. He more or less rebuilt the faces of pilots. Anyway, he performed his magic on Donald who left hospital able to walk quite normally again.