A Spitfire Pilot - Part 32
Uninvited Guests
If at that time the Jerries didn’t know where we were, it didn’t take them long to find out, because the following day two 109s screeched down the valley, across the aerodrome, up and away, before anyone could take off. So after that we had two aircraft in the air all day long and two on the ground ready to take off. I’d just landed after doing an aerodrome patrol, parked the aircraft and was sitting down, writing a letter to Mum. Now we were expecting another squadron to come and join us at Souk-el-Arba and no one was particularly surprised when they saw a batch of about a dozen aircraft in line astern, idling, circling the aerodrome and it looked as though they were coming in to land, until someone suddenly looked up and shouted “109s!”
Well, after that you couldn’t see us for dust. There was no way we could get from where we were, across the ditch, into our aircraft and take off, before the 109s came down. In fact they were halfway down before someone started shouting. So we all scattered like mad and I ran as fast as I could, obviously, and then flung myself down on the ground. At that time we had no slit trenches or anywhere else to hide and there were a few of the groundcrew who flung themselves into ditches, but unfortunately that’s about the first thing the Hun shoots up, apart from aircraft.
We had American anti-aircraft gunners stationed round the aerodrome with their 0.5 machine guns and they were blasting off at everything within sight, but they didn’t hit anything, at least no 109s. But the 109s managed to hit the petrol, and some of our ammunition and the petrol went up with a terrific whoosh and although we were, by this time, about 150 yards away, you could feel the blast on the side of your face as though you were sitting near a fire. Anyway, after the first run, and I must admit I was scared stiff, and it’s no fun lying in the middle of a field where you can hear the bullets hitting the ground and ricochets going right, left and centre and you can’t tell from the noise of the bullets, whether they are coming across you, the side of you or through you. Anyway, none of the pilots were hit, so as I say after the first run, we decided to get a little farther away from the action. I got up to run away, and a chap who was some way from me, shouted out.
“Give me a hand, Robbie!”
It was Sergeant Hussey, who had come across one of our chaps with holes in his stomach and he was trying to drag him along. So I changed my mind and ran back, helped get hold of this shot-up chap. We managed to get him underneath a lorry and there we stayed until all the action had died down. I wasn’t madly happy, because I thought they were more likely to shoot up a lorry then they were some chap out on his own in the middle of a field, but fortunately they didn’t attack our particular lorry and so we got up afterwards and counted our numbers.
We’d lost several of our groundcrew who had taken shelter in the ditches including a couple of a-rabs who’d decided to shelter behind the petrol cans but we didn’t find those until we started throwing mud and dust onto the fires to put them out, when we came across these two burnt up characters; it wasn’t very pleasant.
An hour or so later we were shot up by 190s, but fortunately they did very little damage to our aircraft and none of the personnel, although two of the squadrons which shared the aerodrome with us, 152 and 93, had a fair bit more damage, in fact 152 were pulled out soon after this.
After the second raid we took a lot more interest in the aircraft that might be flying round our vicinity and we spotted the Ju 87s with their escort quite time before they reached our aerodrome, consequently we had lots of time to disappear into little holes we’d found, mostly bomb-craters from the first run and very little damage was done, although it’s quite frightening to sit there and watch an 87 come down, shrieking its head off and dropping its bombs!
Again, the American anti-aircraft gunners didn’t manage to do any damage to the opposing team, but later in the afternoon a Blenheim flew over, accompanied by a couple of Spits, and they opened up like mad, flinging flak and what have you everywhere. Now the normal form of recognition by a friendly aircraft, if it’s being attacked, is to lower its wheels and this Blenheim kept lowering its wheels and raising its wheels and lowering its wheels and we were rushing around to the gunners, telling them that it was a friendly aircraft, but they paid little or no attention and still carried on blasting away. But again, they never hit anything and the Blenheim and its escort disappeared into the distance. Funnily enough, just after that the anti-aircraft gunners were sent away and we were left with two or three Bofors gunners