Old Comrades
All through the night I kept starting up from a fitful doze, looking for signal flares. I felt sure we would be rescued by some magical allied submarine which would pop up nearby. This had actually happened to one of our mates only three weeks before, in similar circumstances, to an Aussie naned Hopkins and his Navigator. Although I thought I saw coloured flares several times in the distance, the miracle didn't happen for us. Daybreak was a relief from the very cold night.
Heartened by the light, and by some of our emergency rations, (mainly Horlicks tablets and chewing gum) we started to paddle eastward, in the direction of Turkey (it was only 60 miles away - a mere bagatelle). We kept up the paddling for a long time, and were doing quite well, I seem to remember, when, at about 0900 hours on 11th November, a most appropriate day, two Arados hove into view. Our Air-Sea Rescue Service. These blokes did something else other than act as fighter escort to supply ships. I felt distinctly disappointed that we were about to be saved, after all. I had begun to place high hopes on surrendering to a neutral country, and tasting some Turkish delights.
Both kites landed, and taxied slowly to our dinghy. The observer of one climbed out on to the float, and threw us a rope. "How long you shvim?" he called. "Since yesterday", I replied. "Since yesterday, hah!" he said, (as if he didn't know!) "For you, ze Var iss over". I have since learned that Jerry said this to almost every captured airman I have ever heard about. I was astounded to find that it was certainly said to all the captured aircrew in the book of collective stories put out by the RAAF aircrew of Lamsdorf POW camp (Stalag VIIIB/344).
It was a bit of a relief, after all, to sit in a dry aircraft, and be flown, courtesy of the Luftwaffe, to the western end of Crete. I didn't like the smell - all German aircraft had a typical smell that was quite unlike the exciting, familiar smell of Allied aircraft.
Stiff and sore from our overnight experience in the Aegean Sea, we were each given a blanket to wrap around ourselves, taken to a small building under guard, and fed a plateful of pasta each, with a mug of water to wash it down. After a few hours of fitful sleep, we were flown off the next morning at 0300 hours to Greece, in a Junkers JU52, the big troop transport aircraft that we had been hunting.
Now I knew the reason we were usually unable to find the troop carriers in these waters. We often did sweeps, hoping to pick up a JU52 or two (this happened earlier, when they were flying to and from Corfu, and we had several successes in this area).
We flew first to Athens, to offload some of the military passengers who were also travelling on the aeroplane. Bob Pritchard and I were closely guarded the whole time by two escorting soldiers, and we were accommodated in a large drill hall, filled with other German soldiers, where we stayed for two nights, sleeping on a couple of blankets on the floor. One of the soldiers who tried to converse with us made it fairly plain that many Germans did not approve of Hitler, who he hastened to tell us was not really German at all, but Austrian! Our first inkling that the great Leader was not the cat's whiskers with all of his people.
On the third day we were again loaded into a JU52, and taken to Salonika. I spent 10 days in a cooler there, being interrogated and pining for the Squadron.
Our prison was a suburban house, single storey, and it must have held about six prisoners. We could not see each other, being locked up in separate rooms, with guards in a section at the front of the house. I caught occasional glimpses of the other prisoners, but the only one I saw regularly was my observer, Bob, as we were taken out once daily to walk around the barbed wire compound which had been the front of the property. We were separated by at least 50 yards, to stop us communicating, and each of us was watched by an armed guard. However, by sign language and native cunning we were able to distract the attention of our guards in order to retrieve cigarettes that had been hidden behind clumps of grass or small bushes by friendly locals, who stood some way off and also made suitable signs to point out where they had hidden the little treasures.
Last edited by Walter603; 26th Jun 2016 at 10:28.
Reason: Spacing