AIDED BY BEDOUINS

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 February 1942, Page 8

AIDED BY BEDOUINS

NEW ZEALAND PILOT’S STORY

A recent cablegram from London told how a New Zealander piloting a Beaufighter in Libya led home to its base 300 miles away another badly damaged Beaufighter, both machines alighting intact. The sequel is told by Pilot-Officer H. H. Crawford, the New Zealand rescue pilot, in a letter to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. Crawford, New Plymouth. “I had been sent to strafe a desert road,” he writes. “A successful job was done, but my machine was badly hit by ground fire. I managed to travel about 80 miles before one motor gave up, and I had to crash land and set fire to the aircraft. “The chap I piloted home some time before saw my plight and made a landing about a mile away. My navigator and I ran toward him, but as we came over a rise we heard machinegun fire. The rescuing plane had to take-off in a hurry, and we were caught by a convoy of German armoured cars.” Pilot-Officer Crawford said he travelled in a truck many miles. On the morning of the third day a sentry took him down a wadi to the truck, where he was left to drink a cup of coffee. The day had not fully dawned, and he suddenly found himself alone. “I dropped my coffee and set off,” he writes, “The Germans chased me

for some time, but I knew they would find it hard to see me in the half-light, and they dared not go too far from the convoy.” After about half an hour’s chase, Pilot-Officer Crawford found a hiding place beside a. dead camel. It was ( about three weeks dead. Some hours later he stood up, “a free, frightened, and very worried man.” Pilot-Officer Crawford was fortunate enough to fall in with some Bedouins late in the afternoon. When

’ satisfied that he was English, they fed land cared for him. Occupying the i same tent in a space about 12ft by 15ft i were nine goats, three dogs, two fowls, ! an odd sheep or two, a pet lamb, a man, a woman, a girl, a boy, and two children. In spite of trouble with fleas and lice, he managed to get a good night’s sleep. The people could not do enough for him. Then the news of the fall of Barce, about 40 miles away, was received. Barce should have been reached on

Boxing Night, but rain and mud made the going too hard, so another night was spent in the open. He rejoined British troops on December 27.