Homeguard Fire Watching - Henry Lemon

Harry Lemon was a painter and served in the First World War initially as a what we might call a Telecom installer, rigging telephone wires along the Western Front. Once that was complete, he was moved to a fighting regiment and became a machine gunner's mate, feeding belts of ammunition through the firing chamber. It was during this that he got shot up by a German pilot in a bi-plane, and his elbow disintegrated. He was sent back to London, and came under the care of the King's Physician, and put in a ward with 8 other men, including a fellow whose leg was badly damaged and was expecting to have a 'deadleg' ie unable to bend at the knee. His name was Green, and Lemon and Green became good mates and after a few days were told they would be going into surgery the next morning. When he came round after the operation and things seemed to have worked well, the King's Physician explained to them both that he had added bone to Green's leg so he saved it but it would be a deadleg ie unable to bend it, and he had used parts of Green's knee to fashion a new elbow for Lemon. They both thought this was amazing and had a jolly good laugh about it apparently.

Then came the Second World War, for which he was excused from military duty because of his elbow, but did become a captain in the Home Guard, running a platoon of volunteers. One of his jobs was to look out from a tall building during air raids, and watch out for enemy pilots parachuting out of damaged planes. One night, watching the war, a bomb exploded across the road and blew glass into him. Mainly his uniform protected him, but he had hundreds of glass fragments embedded in the face, neck and throat. This took a while to recover from, and he was in St Hugh's Hospital close to where they lived in Ladbrook Grove, and after the initial surgery to stitch his face up, he would sleep at the Hospital but during the day walk home to Nan. The worse of the injuries was the loss of sight in one eye.