A WORLD war II veteran who served within the RAF is approaching his 100th birthday later this year.
Kenneth Guest will mark his birthday on October 28 next month.
Being one of the few WWII veterans left, Ken has a remarkable story to tell with a history steeped in life or death situations as he was a member of the Lancaster RAF Bomber Command serving as a bomb aimer.
And whilst he is based in Kent for the time being, he has family, friends and long-lasting connections to Cumbria - having even trained atop airfields in Longtown.
"He was a volunteer in the reserves and he could have stayed working in communications which they would have needed at the time of the war but he wanted to give to his country and protect it, it was quite a special thing," his son Peter Guest said.
In an interview produced for the 2017 Remembrance Sunday service at St James Church in Carlisle, Ken spoke of how he felt climbing aboard the plane each time, knowing that it may have been his last.
"You just did it. It was a period in my life I suppose that I felt I was being used to make the world a safer place.
"We were flying once and the port engine failed, and that provided the power to the under-carriage. The alternative then is to wind it down by hand but we weren't high enough, we wouldn't have had time. Fortunately there was an airfield close-by. We came in, wheels up, and landed at the side of the runway, if we had landed in the runway itself it probably would've caught fire," Ken said.
The father-of-two also spoke of a moment in which he was picked to get rid of unwanted bombs at the end of the war. At the last minute, they decided to send another man who had been late to parade that morning - to which the plane never returned.
"My mother's experience was very similar to my dads in that she changed places with somebody and that person sitting where she was was killed. It's kind of a double whammy for my brother and I because we both know we're meant to be here and we're only here because they both changed places those days," Peter said.
Ken looks forward to marking his 100th birthday around the time of Remembrance Sunday with good company and a glass of champagne.
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