This action served to drive all the smoke and filth back to the bottom of the cockpit, and cleared my head a bit. I switched off the engine to decrease the risk of fire and a petrol-tank explosion, then, assuming a nice gliding speed and performing a series of turns, I surveyed the earth below for a suitable landing-ground. The beach first sprang to mind, but this was out definitely as every few yards was littered with wrecked aircraft and boats. The sea I didn’t relish as I thought the chances of rescue would be remote and since there seemed practically no sea-borne craft in the vicinity. French fields looked uncommonly small and dangerous from 6-7,000 feet, so the only alternative was baling out.
Not wishing to be on the end of a “brolly” for any length of time in case I became a nice juicy bit of 109 meat, I chose to glide to a safe minimum height before “walking out.” It was funny not to see myself “panic” as I always imagined would happen in a crisis. I now look back and think, “Well, who would have thought it.” I suppose the fact that such possibilities as the state I was now in had been discussed so much, and that with certain routines in emergency it took away a hell of a lot of the cause for fear. I had just removed my helmet and released my safety harness when, as luck would have it, I caught sight of something which looked far more like another silver 109 than a liver spot. He regarded me as easy prey, no doubt, and began to approach my tail from above to port. Without engine there was only one thing I could do. A sharp diving turn brought me straight into the huge pall of black smoke which stretched up to nearly 5,000 feet from the blazing oil tanks in the Dunkirk docks area. When I emerged into sunshine again on the other side of the smoke, my friend the 109 had disappeared. He probably thought I was a “goner” and left it at that, thank God!
When I was about 2,000 feet, and with the airspeed at 180 m.p.h., I started to abandon aircraft in the manner so often discussed and recommended in the pilots’ room. The idea was to turn the aircraft on to its back, then drop out, pulling the “ring” at one’s own convenience. The thing which hadn’t been stressed, but which proved the most important, was that the “harness” should remain fastened until the last moment, when, on extracting the release-pin, gravity (according to the venerable Mr. Newton) should assist exit.
As I’ve already explained, the harness which should have been tight was already off. As a result, in attempting to invert the machine, yours truly found himself threequarters of the way over and unable to go either way. A very chaotic state of mind prevailed. However, a fortunate lapse of memory excludes the hectic happening of the next few seconds. A vague remembrance of having two attempts to push myself out, and the next I knew was that I wouldn’t have to take the chute back as a “dud” after all. Mentally the parachute packer was awarded about 15 V.C.s and a brace of life-saving certificates.
The fun wasn’t over yet though. Oh no! There were still French military below and they gave me the benefit of a sneaking burst of machine-gun fire. Fortunately, like their “heavy stuff,” this was just as accurate. It didn’t hit the “brolly” even. I learned later that a solo occupant leaving a British fighter was regarded as a parachutist (German version). This impression apparently still existed when I hit terra firma between two tin huts in a village factory at Fermini. For no sooner had I released my chute when I was set upon by a group of chattering niggers, Moroccan employees, I believe. About four grabbed me and another three saw to it that my gun didn’t leave its holster. I was vainly protesting my innocence and nationality when, lo and behold! one of these dark-skinned individuals was creeping up behind the party feeling furtively in the folds of his overalls. It wasn’t a bad life while it lasted, I reflected, and was about to make a last despairing effort when up dashed a “poilu” whom I afterwards regarded as the spirit of common sense. He took command, and with the retinue of “wog” workers I was escorted back to his unit’s headquarters – a commandeered house. Here I established my identity with a mixture of broken French and gesticulations, also earning the complete confidence and approval of our dusky thugs. I learned that their religion demands decapitation as the only indication of death. We do see life.
At the H.Q. officers’ dug-out, amidst all the pandemonium of dive-bombing and shelling, a couple of Jersey boys proved good pals as well as interpreters. They asked for news of the war and the day of the week, since the hurried retreat had meant the loss of all sense of time and place. I supplied what information I could without disclosing that I thought they hadn’t much chance of getting out of the offensive circle put up by the Germans.
They in turn told me that they were moving into Dunkirk that afternoon and would take me with them. I was anxious to get cracking but had to wait meanwhile, getting my first meal of the day in the form of horse-flesh and unsettled French wine.
Well, in due course one of the Jersey chaps took me to the French H.Q. in Dunkirk in an Austin 8 which they had retrieved from the ditch.
Chaos ruled everywhere. Hundreds of vehicles of war graced both sides of the road, where they had been abandoned as a hindrance by previous owners and drivers. Cattle and a few horses stampeded about the field, littered with decaying bodies of their contemporaries who had been hit by shrapnel or blast. Here and there one saw a car ditched, riddled with bullet holes, and now and again a body of a refugee who had been “caught-up with.” A sordid journey from start to finish, and considering my movements the previous 24 hours it all seemed a dream.
After further questioning at the French G.H.Q. I was conveyed to the British G.H.Q. at a site nearer the docks. Here were heavy guns of the dock’s defence belching forth, more often than not, premature explosions. Ruin and desolation faced me at every turn, but negotiating wrecked buildings I was eventually deposited amongst a most comforting sight, the first British people I had seen that day. At the G.H.Q., to my surprise, I met none other than Jock who had also been shot down and wounded slightly too. That I should meet a fellow pilot was no end of a tonic. We alternately sat and lay flat in a semi-underground shelter for the next few hours, until we were told to make our way to the mole under our own steam. This was a painfully slow business for Jock, and we had to shelter two or three times under vehicles whilst the mole was subjected to continuous shelling and dive-bombing. On one side of the road were blazing railway trucks, goods yards, and shipyards, whilst away on the right was the huge cloud of black smoke rising from the oil tanks in the distance on the other side of the mole.
Once after sheltering in a “casualty station,” we looked out to find a lorry which had sheltered us two minutes before now a mass of twisted wreckage spread over an area five times its normal size. All in the day’s work to the Army boys, but a sensational “birthday” for us.
Eventually the docks were reached and we were greeted by a very cheery bunch of Tars, who seemed to have established permanent residence amongst a pile of sandbags. Another revolting sight was unfolded when some French soldiers began shooting all the stray dogs, insisting they were message-carriers. They did it in the painful way, with about four shots, afterwards dropping the tormented things into the water. I suspected that more than one of the Tommies would willingly have set to on the French had it not been for the futility of it all in the circumstances.
At about 8.30, after about 12 hours or more on French soil, Admiral W——W——instructed Jock and myself to jump aboard a launch which had moored alongside some 50 yards farther down the quay. Not being master mariners and with Jock wounded, the game of descending 30 feet or so to water-level proved quite a problem, but once aboard, the Senior Service made us extremely comfortable. We went to sleep in luxurious bunks (for a weapon of war). An hour later we were awakened and transferred to a destroyer which with two more of its kind had come alongside to take off what was the rear party of the British evacuation. Even the G.H.Q. was finishing, and after that night Dunkirk would be totally French. So 12 hours later would have even more seriously curtailed our chances of rescue had we baled-out the next day.
The five-hour journey to Dover wasn’t entirely without incident. Twice the ship’s guns blazed at an aircraft, probably laying mines in our path, besides which some curious chap on the deck above had tried the trigger of his rifle, with rather disastrous results for a second-lieutenant who sat in the chair of the mess-room below, which the officers and wounded were sharing. I myself had given up the chair only a bare fifteen minutes earlier. Another of those miracles of fate which in these troubled times seem an everyday occurrence.
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