AIRMAN SHIELDED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 103, 3 May 1941, Page 6

AIRMAN SHIELDED

SAVED FROM FIRE.

BRAVERY OF MECHANIC.

( 0.C.) HAMILTON, this day. How when he was badly injured and thrown about 20ft out of his airuaft, which caught fire, a mechanic shielded him from the flames and exploding bullets with his own body, is described by Sgt-Observer R. Mills[ of Hamilton, in a letter to his father,' Mr. 11. Mills, of Hamilton. Sorry lot- such a long delay in writing, hut. have had a bit of a 'fash and am now in hospital with my 101 l leu broken below the knee and my right leg broken above the Knee, is the matter-of-fact way in which he opens his letter. Describing the accident, he reports that they had just returned from a dusk raid over Holland ("very successful, too!") and were coming in to land on the flare path. Apparently another plane had stalled suddenly on the runway. "We did not see it in the dark but we felt it," he adds. Felt Many Pains. "We were doing about 90 m.p.h. I did not lose consciousness. I just lelt. many pains and saw thousands of ruddy lights. I know I stopped with a jerk. "I found myself lying on the ground only about 20ft from the second kite, which was blazing fiercely. Bullets were exploding in all directions and petrol tanks and bombs were exploding with great rapidity. Owing to my injuries I could not be moved, and I was scared stiff, of course. "Suddenly one of the ground staff from our machine showed remarkable courage. He dashed up and flung himself on top of me, shielding me from the flames and bullets." Sergeant-Observer Mills added ihat fortunately his pilot and gunner escaped practically "scot-free." Hospital life was not at all bad now he was over the worst of it. In an earlier letter SergeantObserver Mills described how his plane came home practically shot to pieces and created a great stir on the aerodrome. Plane's Tall Like Sieve. "When we were coming away from our target—a four-hour trip deep into Germany—l heard two loud explosions which rocked the aircraft," he wrote. "We were only about 100 ft above the anti-aircraft guns and kept on going. On landing we found everybody waiting for us, from the wing-commander down to the boy who sweeps out. When we scrambled out we found that one of the loud explosions way back in Germany was a shell bursting on the top of the rudder. A very large piece was ripped out and the tail plane was like a sieve. No one was hurt, but as we were rushed away by the wing-commander in his car you should have seen the crowd around our kite gazing at it with awe and astonishment and poking their fingers through the thousands of holes."