14468/1ARMY veteran Gordon Rendle is supporting a campaign to get a memorial erected to seven men who died when a gun blew up in their faces.

Mr Rendle, now 76, from Kingsbury Street in Marlborough would have been among the casualties if he had not been sent to do an ammunition check.

He was just a few feet away as he returned to take his place in the crew operating the four and a half inch naval gun at Corbyn Head at Torquay.

Mr Rendle who was just 16 at the time had the task of helping carry his dying and badly hurt mates to a first aid post.

Some had died instantaneously as the huge metal breech block of the gun exploded in their faces.

Others received horrific blast injuries and died later.

Days after Mr Rendle was one of the pall bearers who carried the coffins of the seven men who died to the Hele Cemetery in Torquay.

Their graves lie together in a spot the locals still refer to as the Heroes' Corner.

Mr Rendle and his wife Margaret and stepson Tony recently returned from a short holiday in his native Torquay.

He was disgusted to find there was no memorial to mark the spot where his seven friends died.

Four of them, like him, were members of the local Home Guard because they were too young to join the regular forces. The other three who died were regular soldiers.

They had been training with the gun that was part of the Torquay defences in case of an enemy invasion attempt from the sea.

The gun they were firing was capable of shelling ships up to three miles out at sea.

Although years have passed since the fateful day on August 11, 1944, Mr Rendle said he has never forgotten the carnage that greeted him as he returned to the gun he had been operating minutes before.

One of his best friends, fellow teenager George Buckingham, had been serving in the Home Guard because he was too young to join-up.

He was one of the Dad's Army members who perished.

To this day Mr Rendle keeps in touch with Mr Buckingham's sister.

Mr Rendle eventually joined the Royal Artillery when he was old enough and, in eight and a half years, saw service in France, Palestine, Malta and North Africa.

After his demob he had a variety of jobs including working on farms with horses, as a trawlerman out of Brixham in Devon and latterly as a welder with Archie Kidd farm machinery makers at Devizes.

He and his second wife, another Devonian, moved to Marlborough in 1976.

On a recent holiday in South Devon Mr Rendle took his wife to see the spot at Corbyn Head where his friends perished.

He said he was upset to see there was no memorial to the seven men who died.

He was pleased to hear that another former soldier Pete Foreman, who writes a column in a South Devon weekly newspaper, was campaigning to get a memorial to the men erected at Corbyn Head.

Mr Rendle said: "They are asking for a plaque but what I would like to see is another gun put on the same spot to show people exactly what they were firing when the breech blew back on them.

"I think it would be nice to see another four and a half inch gun there but never in a month of Sundays will we see it happen."

Looking back to that evening when seven of his mates died, Mr Rendle said: "If I had not been sent to fetch a piece of paper called State of Ammunition I would have been there with them.

"There was a war on and, although they were not engaged with the enemy, they were on active service.

"Is it too much to ask for another gun, or even a plaque, to be put on the spot where they died?"