ARMS DROPPED TO MAQUIS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24370, 23 September 1944, Page 6

ARMS DROPPED TO MAQUIS

■- ♦ WORK OF BOMBER

COMMAND

NEW ZEALAND OFFICER’S PART

(R.N.Z.A.F. Official News Service.) LONDON. September 21. A New Zealander who shared one of the best kept secrets of the war—the dropping of arms and supplies to the resistant movement in Europe—has just been awarded the D.F.C. lor gallantry and outstanding service on air operations. He is Pilot Officer Vincent Rex Jamieson, whose mother is Mrs Clara McCoy, of Auckland. The Air Ministry recently announced that supplies ior the Maquis, who libcrated Paris, were dropped in substantial quantities by Royal Air Force Bomber Command, which had been supplying the underground forces of occupied countries for a considerable time. That announcement ended a period of complete secrecy about the constant supply of arms from England to Europe. Since April, when he began his second tour of operations, Pilot Officer Jamieson has flown as rear-gunner in Stirling bombers to many secret rendezvous. He has seen containers dropped by night on selected areas, where ‘reception committees” of underground forces were waiting to collect them. In three months 10,000 containers of food, as well as weapons, have been dropped bv the R.A.F. in operations calling for particular skill and courage. Pilot Officer Jamieson has been on this job 11 times. His D.F.C., however, is a reward for a large number of sorties, including attacks on Dortmund, Dusseldorf. and Berlin. Over the latter city one night he destroyed two enemy fighters. He shared in the destruction of two others, and claims another probably destroyed. The citation calls him "a highly skilled, resolute gunner, whose fine fighting qualities and unfailing devotion to duty have won great praise.” Pilot Officer Jamieson, aged 26, was a machinist in an Auckland biscuit faetpry. ___________