THE poor chap pictured here looks to have been in the wars.

Even the children seemed shocked at the sight of a bandaged man appearing from the wreckage of an aircraft. In fact, it was all imaginary – an exercise involving all emergency services.

Ambulances and rescue teams from Oxford and the Pressed Steel and Morris Motors car plants at Cowley raced to Cowley shopping centre in 1963 to the scene of a fake air crash.

It was part of a national Civil Defence recruiting campaign.

The Oxford Mail reported: “For the purpose of the exercise, it was assumed that an aeroplane had crashed into a skyscraper being built at Cowley Centre.

“Often CD exercises are concerned with mopping up the remains of a hydrogen bomb holocaust, but in this new and, to the public, more realistic tragedy, the volunteer casualties were just as shattered and bloody.”

To add a touch of realism to the scenario, a wrecked fuselage from the Civil Defence stores was propped against a building in the shopping centre square.

Ninety men were brought in from the police, fire, ambulance and Civil Defence services.

White and khaki-clad figures swarmed round the crash site, rescuing 25 casualties and lowering them on to a fire brigade turntable ladder and then into waiting ambulances.

Organisers hailed the operation a success, proving that the Civil Defence Corps could perform in peace time as well as in war. The Corps was formed with the aim of taking pressure off the emergency services in the event of war or other catastrophe, but it was shortlived.

As we recalled (Memory Lane, May 10), £20,000 was spent on new buildings at Oxford Airport, Kidlington, in 1960 for members to practise rescue work, but in 1968, the Government decided to disband the organisation.

Do you recognise yourself or anyone else in the picture? Let me know.