Ross Giblin
Neville Sandiford (centre), 97, served as a gunner in WWII. Training in a Wellington bomber in England, in 1945, he suffered a serious head injury when his plane caught fire and crashed. Supplied photo. It would be 90 minutes before rescuers cut him out, and he was taken to hospital unconscious. “My skull was cracked and my eye badly damaged.” It was not until he was visited in Oxford Hospital, where he spent two weeks, and was visited by a priest that he would get any idea of what happened. One of the engines in the twin engine bomber had caught fire and the inexperienced pilot had not been able to keep the plane even as he attempted to land.