A fireman’s lot is a most haphazard one, to judge from comments from “The Nines,” journal of the Herts Fire and Ambulance Brigade.

After a Watford call to a “female unable to withdraw finger from handle of teacup,” an inquiry into odd missions was made.

There was the unfortunate cow which had pushed its head through an ornamental fence, slipped on muddy ground and hanged itself. Four little piglets fell to the bottom of a well, and a fireman had the task of picking up the fourth, while dangling at the end of a 100ft line, clutching three to his bosom.

Swans on roofs from which they cannot alight, horses wedging their hindquarters down manholes, cows sinking into mud... it’s all in the day’s work.

“Far too frequently,” adds “The Nines”, “are special services tragic. The Brigade constantly turns out to release people trapped under overturned, or in, crashed vehicles. In a theatre, a man fell from the proscenium fly to a platform 30-feet above stage level; three workmen were trapped in a collapsed trench; firemen have crawled along sewers, dragging an injured man on a stretcher, and have tunnelled to an injured man and brought him up the shaft of a sewer under construction.”

A fantastic adventure befell one brigade. A woman was “trapped in a settee”. In spring cleaning, she upended a sofa in her kitchen to clean the tops of the walls. It slipped, pinning her against the door and blocking the window. Entry by door and window were impossible. Floors and ceilings were of concrete and could not be cut. Eventually, the firemen removed bricks from the wall and climbed through. They still could not move the settee and eventually had to cut it in two.

[From the Watford Observer of July 18, 1952]