A Spitfire Pilot - Part 37
This is the penultimate excerpt from my fathers' memoirs and describes his final combat and subsequent wounding.
December 20th 1942 – Aerodrome Patrol, Souk-el-Arba
I didn’t fly on 19th December and wasn’t due to fly on 20th, but we’d just had a portable gramophone given to us with several records, including two Bing Crosbys’ that Mum and I have copies of at home, and also some Vera Lynns and I was happily listening to a Vera Lynn record of “Do I Love You, Do I?” when the flight commander came over and said that he was due to fly an aerodrome patrol but didn’t really feel in the mood and would I mind going? Well there was nothing else to do out there, so I said OK. Now I couldn’t fly my aircraft, so I got in another one, took off with Sergeant Hussey to do this aerodrome patrol. I’d been up for about 40 minutes and the aircraft decided it was going to fly itself. I’d hold the stick steady and the aircraft would fair bump up and down, like going on a roller-coaster. There was obviously something funny somewhere, so I brought it down and landed. I suppose if I’d had any sense, I’d have stayed down but I got into another aircraft, took off again and joined Sergeant Hussey for our aerodrome patrol.
Well, we hadn’t been up very long when they reported from the ground that there was a 20+ raid coming in from Medjiz el Bab, which was not far up the road from us. Well that seemed great for Hussey and I, inasmuch as we were high enough to spot a high bunch coming in and we’d probably get a very good bounce on the ones that were coming in lower. And lo and behold, in they came. We started to go down on them and it seemed far too easy, because normally the Hun fights in layers and you go down after one lot and the next lot comes down and clobbers you. Well I couldn’t see anything above so we continued on down and just before we got within range, I looked down and there was one 109 creeping along the deck, coming up underneath Hussey, who was flying about 200 yards from me. So I called Hussey up and told him to break, but either he didn’t hear me or else his r/t had gone u/s which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence out there at that time. Anyway as the Jerry had started shooting and I could see the flashes all over the place from his guns, I pulled in to try and head him off and with luck have a crack at him, and I’m not sure now whether I hit him or not, but the next thing I knew there was a hell of a bang and I got hit in the head and started bleeding like a stuck pig.
I couldn’t see out of my right eye and was feeling a bit groggy so the only thing to do was to crash-land and I can remember it as clearly as anything. It was twenty to five in the afternoon, it was a Sunday and I was at 1500’. So I pushed the aircraft down, it was doing about 180 by that time. I landed with the wheels up and the engine still going and all I got out of the crash was a bruised shoulder, because the Spitfire could take an enormous amount of punishment without any damage to the pilot. Anyway, I came to a grinding halt and by the time I’d finished, the engine was pointing off to the left and I was staring from the cockpit out over nothing. I opened the hood and door and crawled out and crawled as far as I could from the aircraft, because the Huns were great ones for coming back and shooting you up on the ground. Anyway, nothing happened to me from above and I saw a lorry come driving across this mudfield and stop a little way from me and out from the back came an army bloke with a rifle and I thought,
“That’s all I need, some idiot to shoot me now I’ve landed!”
Anyway I put my hand up and they realised I was, in fact, English and they helped me into the back of the lorry and took me to a casualty station. I was operated on at night and I asked the doc if he could keep all the little bits and pieces he took out of me, and at one time I had an envelope with about nine little bits of shrapnel and odd pieces, but I’m afraid, over the years, I’ve mislaid it.
The following day I had a hair-raising ride in an ambulance to another casualty station and the day after that we were picked up again and put on an ambulance train to the 84th General Hospital at Souk Arras, where I got my first decent nights sleep, doped to the eyeballs. There was a fair amount of disorganisation and I worked out it was a darn sight better being an officer than an Other Rank, especially if you were wounded.
I had the stitches taken out of my forehead on Christmas Eve, and as I couldn’t get out of bed or move my head, I had to just lie there and listen to all the chat that was going on around me and in particular, listen to some very affected voice from a chap in the bed next to mine. He seemed a right twit, frankly, but after a couple of days the colonel of his regiment came in and from what I gather, a chap whom I thought was a complete twit, turned out to be a right hero.
He was a Coldstream Guards Officer and their position had been overrun by tanks and he managed to get out of his slit-trench and nipped around putting bombs under the German tanks and causing quite a bit of chaos and confusion, so I realised that you can’t really tell what anyone is like merely by listening to them talk.