Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW II

[Wiley]

Peter Jensen, instalment 12

We organised ourselves as best as eleven men can in a six man dinghy. We sat alternately on the edge and inside the ring with our legs and feet bunched up in the middle, trying to keep Pierre's poor shattered leg on top. Pierre sat inside stoically, occasionally coughing up blood. Then he started complaining - about his watch, which had got water into it and stopped. "I paid a tenner for it," he said, "and look at it - not worth two bob now."

After a while I could not stand it any longer so I said: "Pierre, if you cut out your whingeing, I'll buy you a new watch when we get back to base."

He looked pleasantly surprised at this, and I must admit that later he kept me to my promise. Anyway no further mention was made of his watch.

I looked across at the man opposite me and was surprised to see a strange face, also that he had a pale blue RAF battle dress on. He noticed my perplexed look and solemnly held out his hand. "John Eshelby," he said.

I took his hand. "Peter Jensen."

I remembered then that our engineer, Lance Woodland, had gone to hospital for a minor operation and obviously John had been detailed to replace him. He had not come to briefing with us, but had gone straight to the aircraft and had been sitting in the engineer’s position all the trip. He had just joined the squadron and this was his first trip. What an initiation! I then introduced him to the rest of crew.

I must admit that the incongruity of the situation did not dawn on any of us until some time later.

My watch was the only one that was still going, and one of the crew, I can't remember who, kept asking me the time (as if it was of any consequence). After about the sixth or seventh time I began to get annoyed, and at the last request I said somewhat brusquely: "It's exactly five minutes after the last time you asked."

Dudley, who was sitting next to me dug me in the ribs. I came to my senses and carried on in a changed tone: "I can assure you the pubs will be closed by now," and hoped that no-one had noticed my aberration.

So we sat, as immobile as possible, frightened to move in case the fabric of the dinghy was damaged and our last link with life would go. The wind blew the waves into whitecaps. We were tossed up on top, then down into the troughs. Every now and then a wave would curl over us then drop on top, filling the dinghy. I welcomed this in a way as I had a small plastic beaker and was in a ‘leaning-forward’ position. I would scoop water out from between the mass of legs and feet on the bottom of the dinghy and pass it to someone in an upright position who would empty it out and pass it back. By the time I had the dinghy fairly empty, another wave would break over us and so I was kept busy and did not have time to think.

Dudley tried hard to keep our spirits up. At one stage, he called on George to sing. I can still see George, sitting on the edge of the dinghy, a huge foam-capped wave behind him, giving out a rollicking "Oh, a life on the ocean wave, a life on the rolling sea!" in his magnificent baritone voice.

Darkness came.

"George," said Dudley, "Give us a lecture on astro-navigation."

Again, George complied, but somehow none of us could concentrate too well.

The moon came up and with it the wind dropped. The sea became a gleaming, greasy series of rolling hills. I suppose I hallucinated a bit, for at times I was convinced that I was on the moon. I found it hard to grasp that we must only have been a mile or two from where we had ditched.

Time became meaningless, we could only wait until daylight to try to fly the aerial kite, so we sat and waited.

It was the longest night I have ever known.

Suddenly, it must have been about 4 a.m., we heard an aircraft. George fished a 2 star red out of the bag that hung over the side and handed it to Dudley. Dudley pulled out the pin - and nothing happened. Obviously the water had got into it. The engine noise faded away and our hopes with it.

"Give me another one George", said Dudley. "I'll keep it ready."

George handed over another 2 star red.

A few minutes later another aircraft, or maybe the same one and he was investigating something, maybe us. We all had switched on our Mae West lights, but they were very dim. Anyway, it was an aircraft, and Dudley unscrewed the cap of the pyrotechnic and pulled the pin while we all held our breaths. What a sight! Two beautiful red stars shot to the heavens and we cheered.

The aircraft turned and swooped towards us, we could see the outline of a Catalina against the sky. He came down almost to wave-top height and switched on a searchlight. He was a ‘Leigh-light Cat’ that hunted the U-boats at night.

I had a sudden panic, as often in these circumstances, in the excitement of finding survivors in a dinghy, the crew in the aircraft forget to wind up the trailing aerial and the survivors end up being killed by the aerial weights. I yelled "Hold your heads!" But I needn't have worried. They had wound in their aerial.

The Cat stayed with us until dawn, circling, losing us, searching, finding us again. As dawn came we saw that there was no cloud cover and our hearts sank. Tiger country was no place for Catalinas in broad daylight. With no cloud cover, the 88's would have had him for breakfast, so we naturally expected him to leave. But to our eternal gratitude, he stayed, still circling and obviously homing something on to us - but what?

At about 9 o'clock he signalled us with his Aldis Lamp: "Must go, short of fuel; help coming at 1000." Then he turned away and was soon lost to sight, and once again we were alone except for the same small sea bird that had been with us from the time we had ditched.

Our spirits dropped to zero.