JAMES ALDRIDGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 150, 21 December 1940, Page 20

JAMES ALDRIDGE

I WAS on a British bombing raid over Brindisi, in Italy, last night. Less than twenty-four hours ago at an unnameable cool moonlit airfield I stood under a British heavy bomber dressing for the flight. While engines were warming up and glowing red-hot, I pulled on fur boots, fur trousers, fur jacket, and a fleece-lined helmet. Then an anti-drowning jacket called a "Mac-West." Finally the parachute harness. Behind me the crew stepped up into the bomber. It had a belly like a codfish and dew was running off its sides like sweat. As the engines revved high once more, I plugged in my earphones for the intercrew communication. The pilot said: "All set." Red lights were lit up on the airfield perimeter. The plane roared, jerked, and taxied down the field. The increased speed made it bend like a tiger about to spring. Then we were lifted suddenly in a belly-sinking rise.

I had been given the action station in the astral hatch. This is a glass blister which protrudes above the fuselage amidships. I could get a clear view all round, and as I stuck my head up, I could see the earth disappearing below. I had forgotten my gloves and it was getting cold as we climbed. The wireless operator gave me a hot air-hosepipe to hold. But I soon got sick of standing up watching the clouds go by, so I sat down on a camp bed. As the plane roared towards Italy, I lay down and slept hugging the warm pipe. Two machineguns swung at my feet. Rounds of ammunition belts were under me. It was a safe feeling.

I was awakened a couple of hours later by the observer, who was taking the sights through the astral hatch. I heard him through the earphones checking the course with the pilot. Then he lifted from its box a small object like a bomb and dropped it through the open window. Pretty soon we saw it burst on the sea below. Then coloured smoke showed the wind direction and the approximate speed. I knew we were nearing our target, so I stood up again in the astral hatch. Down below I could see the white coastline against the evenness of the sea. "We are getting near it. Are you O.K. back there?" the pilot's voice *ppke to-me through the earphones. "0.X." I said. "Is your parachute handy?" "Yes," I-replied. "Well, remember, if anything goes wrong to count a good three. ' If you hit water push that harness release very quickly." Swearing interrupted the conversation as the observer, now the bombaimer, said "Look at those blank clouds. We won't see much if they're over our target."

The observer was now lying flat in the plane, his nose over the glass window and the bomb sights. I could hear a great discussion between him and the pilot then. Whether the clouds were over our target or not. I was now standing up, my head literally out of the plane, under the glass hood. I was clutching the hot pipe to my belly, keeping warm. I could see night all round me. Suddenly I saw a pinpoint flash of light away ahead. Then another and another, miles .-.apart from each other. I heard the bomb-aimer say "There it is. And is the Chief getting everything? Look at "that stuff they're throwing up." It .was Brindisi's anti-aircraft guns pouring red hot lead upwards at the leader plane ahead of us. He was opening up the target. Brindisi's a "virgin" target. Suddenly I saw the outline way below' of Brindisi town. Almost at the same time the wireless operator said, that he had heard the 8.8.C. news bulletin, reporting' 1000 casualties in a German raid over Coventry. The crew got pretty mad and ;did not feel too friendly about the population of Brindisi.

;. Acac's got thicker as we came nearer. jit took us a long time to get right 'into its area. Thicker and thicker it 'got before us. Then I saw a red flame /burst'behind us and knew we were 'tover the town. This was about 3 ;o'clock in a bright moonlit morning. • We flew over the town once through i«\ thick string of black A.A. bursts. jlEach side, above and below us were lA".A. bursts. Right below, a myriad [points of red flashes were guns firing •at us. We flew right through the letuff and over the town unwavering. LThen a flaming onion came up. These jtere the deadliest of all Acacs. In a jgreat slow orange burst it flew before jus like a verey light. It reflected red jpn the wings. The front gunner who !;was nearest to it, yelled in the microI phone: "Look at that stuff. For iheaven's sake look at it." Then came the pin point of tracers. All were reflected in a fiery fierceness against the white cloudbank below us. While the observer, in a great temper, told everybody through the microphone what he thought of the cloud bank, we turned around and flew right back again .over the town. We were still looking for the target.

whole area was lit up. I thought it was a searchlight and then I heard: "That's the chief's incendiaries." The great fire was spreading under the clouds below us. We went over the town, turned around, and then flew back" again. Suddenly I saw a plane shooting up through the clouds behind us. I thought it was a fighter and roared so through the microphone. Nobody heard me. I was told later that it was the chief's plane which had almost been blown upwards by the anti-aircraft guns below the clouds. The fire below was spreading. The A.A.S were just thick over four square miles. Great talk went on between the pilot and the bomber about the target. Flying again over the town with nobody taking any notice of the A.A. guns but me. We flew over the town five times to make sure of finding ■ the target, this after hearing about the 1000 killed.in Coventry. , This though every gun in 1 the * place was firing at us.: But we were able to fly through it for half an hour to find the target. Suddenly, "There it is on the left." The bomber could see. The plane swung, around. A burst of A.A. guns came very near behind us. The plane then levelled and sank lower. Through the dome I seemed to have my head right into the A.A. bursts. I yelled when the stuff came too near. I was yelling all the time. Red flashes lit up the wet wings as the plane sank and then flattened out. The bomb aimer yelled: "Hold your course, hold it." The plane steadied then bumped a little as the A.A.s came near. "For heaven's sake hold it." The observer yelled; the plane steadied again. Then the plane suddenly shot up. I felt the jolt directly under my feet. The observer shouted: "First release." The ■ first bomb was on its way down. Another jolt and a second bomb followed the first. The plane jerked, A.A. guns flashed red, bombs were hurtling down, but the pilot held straight to the course until the third bomb was down. A few seconds later, there was a burst below; then another and another. The whole town was lit up. We banked and climbed around upwards. I felt my stomach slide down an inch or two as more Spanish onions followed us up. But they missed. In a great wide arc, axwayp thick with A.A. fire, we turned and came back on the target. A.A.s burst right under our noses. The pilot pulled the plane around in a great steep bank just in time but returned in a straight course to the target. Again "Hold it, hold it." The plane soared as I felt a jerk, and another and yet another as bombs were falling over Brindisi. Now

James Aldridge, writer of this dispatch, is a young Australian who went to London to start his newspaper career there. He is reported to have been the only British newspaperman to penetrate into the forward battle areas in Finland. He saiv the German invasion of Norway. He ivas the first newspaperman on board the Australian cruiser Sydney after her return to, Alexandria following the sinking of the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni, and the first man to report the arrival of the Australians in the Western Desert.

Mr. Aldridge a few weeks ago flew to Greece to cover the campaign there. He swung himself by a rope over a blown-up bridge into Albania. His presence in a British bomber is typical of his eager quest for news. Today he writes for the Sydney "Sun" and Melbourne "Herald," and his stories are released in the United States by the North American Newspaper Alliance.

there was a mountainous burst of light below. One, two; one, two, three. Then quickly, as we banked, we saw two red flashes on the ground, definitely ground explosions. The cloud obscured the remainder.

I was sick of A.A. shells, which were getting thicker. But I was getting used to it at the same time. I forgot where I was. It would have been an absurd picture to see a man in my position. Standing there with his head in the sky, fire above and below and all around him, the town beneath writhing under the bombardment, but a man just clasping a hot hosepipe to his belly, shivering and yelling his head off.

•But again we flew over our target, dodging the A.A. It was too thick not to dodge. Right over the target the bomb-aimer shouted "Let her go, let

her go" and he pushed the electric release for the last time. A few hundred smaller bombs like rain dropped on Brindisi. A series of small bursts below, then another spreading fire, lit up the clouds. "That's the whole lot. Let's go back, and take a good look around," 1 heard in the earphones. We banked and turned, through the A.A. fire and flew dodging back over our course right over the whole works. The observer bomber was still, cursing because he could not see properly for the clouds. Then we turned again, more or less kissing the A.A. good-bye or vice, versa. And left Brindisi to the next plane. We had been over Brindisi under constant thick A.A. fire for almost an hour.- I was still standing up in the astral hatch looking back. I could see the whole thing in easier perspective. A great.area with red pin points of light, like red' lights being flashed on over the whole area. Then bursts in

the sky. We were climbing away from it. The whole thing, gradually disappeared until I looked back and could see nothing. Gradually I relaxed. The bomb-aimer came back all smiles and lifted my earflap and shouted, "All 0.X." I nodded and clasped the hot air pipe closer and slept as we went southward. Over the home base we flew around over the clouds for a while and then made a perfect landing. I stepped out of the plane and stood stripping off my gear, laughing and relieved at it all; I walked with the crew over the dim aerodrome to the crew room. We stood around more or less silent, waiting for the others to return. I heard one and waited. As it landed I heard someone say, "That's Mac. He's 0.X,, anyway." We waited again until the others came back one by one and all the planes were on the ground. Then like a-sigh everybody relaxed and the whole thing became just an experience already old and to be talked about, .