I was just using some of the words from my websites on the search engines yesterday, I put in the two words 'legless' and 'RAF'. These words are used on my websites because I am legless, I served in the RAF for more than 12 years and I was just checking if the search engines had registered these words for me. I was quite surprised that most of the search engines had me listed on the first results page for these words, even some of the pages from my new legless HQ website where there too. I was not surprised by the only other person listed in these results though and quite rightly for me, Douglas Bader dominated the results. Douglas Bader was my childhood hero, the famous legless, World War II flying ace for the RAF. I personally met Douglas in the late 1960s when I had just finished studying at the RAF college, he even showed me one of his false legs then too.

I never thought at the time when I met Douglas, that about forty years later I would have the same physical disability that he had already been coping with for many years by that time and I think that it is because of the influence of his attitude upon me, that I don't let my own physical problem of being legless get me down. In fact, I don't even think about it most of the time at all, I can fully understand now how Douglas just got on with what he felt that he had to do at the time and didn't even give his personal disabilities a second thought.

So just by using the search engines to check my website rankings yesterday, brought back some good memories for me and prompted me to think about someone whom I hadn't thought about for a very long time and now having the same physical problem myself, it has given me an insight into the way that Douglas must have been thinking during the war and how he quite easily coped with it.

Thinking about all of this 'legless stuff' has made me thirsty now. "Time for more beer!"

Cheers for now, Ex RAF Legless