Story of Jeffrey Ralf Ings (Royal Air Force)

Jeffrey was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire on 23 July 1921. He joined the Royal Air Force as a boy entrant. Initially, he served as bomber ground crew but was later transferred over to RAF Bomb Disposal. After D-Day, he served in Bomb Disposal in France, Belgium and Germany. He loved the role and would have joined for life.

After the end of hostilities, he was involved in clearing German munitions. At Lubeck, he was supervising a line of German prisoners/ex-servicemen who were loading surplus munitions for disposal at sea when a bomb exploded. The fuses had not been removed from some bombs. Many Germans were killed and Jeffrey suffered life-threatening injuries. His left arm was completely blown open. He underwent surgery at the Churchill Hospital where they had to shorten the tendons, causing his hand to be always in a claw shape. He had no feelings of heat or cold in his left hand, so he always wore a glove. He also had a bad limp. At one point, his wife said that she had to soak her handkerchief in cologne because the smell of gangrene was so strong.

The contributor brought a notebook from his time in bomb disposal. He would sketch as they were diffusing bombs so the next time people could know what to do. They never thought of him as artistic until they found this. He wrote a chapter entitled 'Bad Luck in Lubeck' about what happened to him in Lubeck.

He was mentioned in Despatches quite early in the war, probably when he was still ground crew, but he never explained how that came about.

He left the RAF after the war and worked with the British Motor Association in Oxfordshire as a clerk. He never ever mentioned his experiences of the war, not even once to his son. He did not feel bitter against the Germans. He was often mistaken for a German and spoke very good German, probably because he was in a German hospital for 2 years.

He kept in touch with some people he was involved with in Bomb Disposal, but as he got older, he was much more limited in his movement. Eventually, he suffered from Alzheimer's Disease and lived until he was 97.

The contributor's maternal grandfather (whose medal is seen in an attached photo) who joined up as a military policeman has a scroll of King Olaf of Norway for his part in the liberation of Norway.