CRASHING GROUND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 40, 27 November 1940, Page 5

CRASHING GROUND.

CAPTURED GERMAN PILOTS.

LONDON, October 22.

This corner-of the country is one of the great crashing grounds of enemy airmen, aiid I had a chance of speaking to several Army .intelligence officers who are usually the first to. interrogate them, says'"A, special: correspondent on the south-east coast of, England in a dispatch to.“ The Times.” It is their experience, he adds, that the fighter pilots are of a. much better type than the bomber crews, who are usually violent young Nazis, often with a wireless operator of about 17. The age of the fighters is about 24, though two extreme instances, both pilots of single-seater Messerschmitts, .suggest that no one is too* yoiing or old in Hitler’s duped generation. One was a niere stripling who was shot down over the coast and died from wounds ; the other a staff captain of 51 who flew in a large formation and expressed astonishment at running into a fighter patrol. He was iworried, too, about the bombing of Berlin, but most pilots flatly refuse to believe that Berlin has been bombed at all.

Home leave is severely restricted, and it is a part of German propaganda to withhold news from them, just as their own losses are concealed by making up formations with pilots from different squadrons. 3lost of the captured airmen have plenty of flying experience. They arc usually wearing, together with the second-class Iron Cross, the blue four years’ service ribbon and the ribbon of either the Spanish or Sudeten campaign.

The detailed interrogation is, of course, left to the R.A.F., but it is the impression of Army officers that, while non-commissioned officers are cowed, the commissioned ranks are remarkably cheerful and seem glad to be out of it after over-much flying. Often they have prepared handbags containing linen and toilet articles. Most of them seem surprised at the strength of British resistance, and nearly all speak English; they also smoke English cigarettes from the abandoned stores of the B.E.F.

At least one of these prisoners had already been taken by the French and handed oyer, after the capitulation^the most treacherous of the , actions of Vichy. Then there was the case of.the fat little Storm Trooper ,who, having come, over'with a'bomber* crew, spat at the officer who arrested him.