THERE are many inspiring tales of bravery, heroism and tenacity born from the adversity of the Second World War.

But one man from Stanford-Le-Hope, who had the daring responsibility of dismantling mines, has told his remarkable stories and anecdotes to the Imperial War Museum.

George Reeves is 92 now and while in the 1940s he was waging a secret – and ultimately successful – war with the Germans, he is now battling lung cancer. Yet he still has a sparkle in his eye that tells you many people owe this man an awful lot.

He was part of a specialist Royal Navy team that operated both here in the UK, at sea and abroad. His job was to strip mines and make them safe. Dropped from aircraft, these lethal devices parachuted into civilian locations.

Hanging from church spires, landing precariously in the grounds of breweries, in Hove back gardens, in the River Thames and even perched on the roof of the London Palladium, it was the potential for mines to detonate anywhere that appealed to German forces.

Mr Reeves, who joined the Navy as a volunteer aged 20, travelled across the country and eventually into Germany to tackle these mines.

Originally armed with just a bicycle pump and a motor horn, he and his Special Services team, incredibly, learnt as they went along.

Mr Reeves told the Gazette: “These mines had never been produced or advertised in the UK. So we had to play it by ear and learn as we went along.

“There were various types, acoustic, magnetic, and they worked off a nine volt dry cell battery. Once they started ticking, you had 22 seconds to get away from them!”

When mines were dropped, signals were received by the Admiralty in London which would send units to deal with them.

“We travelled all over England,” Mr Reeves said, “but we did quite a lot of mines in this area. A tanker went up on us in the Thames.”

This was at the Shell Haven Refinery. Two mines were found, one on the foreshore and another on the midstream.

As Mr Reeves and his team stripped the one on the foreshore, another floating alongside a jetty where a tanker was berthed was triggered by the tanker’s movement, destroying a number of vessels.

Mr Reeves said: “One mine was dropped and its parachute got caught on a church spire on Old Kent Road in East London. There was another in a brewery, once we’d made that safe we had a good sample!”

The work of Mr Reeves and his team was top secret. He couldn’t even tell his father, who, when he found out, told his son: “You need your head seeing to.”

Mr Reeves was awarded a British Empire Medal in 1944, before leaving for Germany where he assisted in the capture of the man making the mines.

In 1945 Winston Churchill called the work “cold-blooded heroism” which had “been the cause of saving many lives and homes.”.

A spokeswoman for the Imperial War Museum said: “We did interview George Reeves last year. He provided a good selection of anecdotes about the interesting and dangerous work with which he was involved.

“The real value of George Reeves’ interview is in its potential for research. His interview has been added to our collections.”

Amid the accolades he received for his unquestionable fortitude, Mr Reeves, even now, remains modest: “I got used to them [the mines] after a while.

“I never worried about anything. I could be on a boat, it could be blown to pieces, and I just looked at it as ‘well, that’s your luck!’”

Mr Reeves now lives on Caldwell Road with his wife Doris. Following the war, he worked at Shell Haven as a maintenance engineer.