AID TO ENEMY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 77, 27 September 1941, Page 11

AID TO ENEMY

RESCUED FROM SEA

CRASHED GERMAN FLYERS

The rescue, in darkness, or crashed German . flyers from ■ the sea is described in a letter written home by O.S. Hywel Hughes, son of the Rev. Gladstone Hughes, of Wellington. O.S. Hughes is serving on a British warship.

"I was having a bit of a chat when we heard aircraft engines fairly close at hand," he writes. "We sprang to it, loaded, and trained the guns round on the starboard beam. We were ready to open up when the engines mysteriously ceased. Our eyes searched the gloom; our engines were revved up and we quickly altered course to starboard. We were ill positive now that the plane had come down in the sea, and a few minutes later our guess was confirmed. We eagerly crowded to the guard rails of the gun deck and scanned the sea ahead. Sure enough a black object loomed up just ahead off the starboard bow and resolved itself into a dark form of an aeroplane on the surface of the sea. We hove to about 80 yards away, the sea-boat was sent off, and a spotlight stabbed the darkness.

"It revealed a sight which will always remain indelibly impressed upon my mind. The black shape of the plane down by the head with tail slightly above the water —black and evil-looking, with the unmistakable sign of the swastika rather faint, because it had been painted over. Standing close in by the plane, was a small collapsible boat holding three crouching figures with arms raised above their heads _n sign of surrender. Muffled voices in German came across the water. . . . We stood by to take the survivors on board and it was not long before they drew alongside. From the gundecks we could clearly see the Jerries' crouched figures in the tiny boat looking very large and bloated in their flying kit. We could hear their 'Ach, Ach,' and their grunts, which one always associates with Germans for some reason or other."

O.S. Hughes said that he was detailed to keep watch over one of the prisoners, a proper squarehead, blonde, } but pretty bald and tanned, with cruel blue eyes and a thin .mouth.