AMBITION REALISED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24715, 18 September 1941, Page 8

AMBITION REALISED

AMERICAN TRAINING AS PILOT ONE YEAR REACHING ENGLAND (Rec. 9 p.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 16. An American from Chicago, who is now training as a pilot at an R.A.F. service flying training school, tried for over a year to reach England from America to get into the war. He was in New York when he decided to join the R.A.F." He hitchhiked to New Orleans, obtained a seaman's papers and signed on as a Canadian deck.hand in a Norwegian tanker bound for Havre. The Havre police would not let him ashore and he had to recross the Atlantic to Venezuela, where the ship took on an oil cargo and sailed for Toulon. While the tanker was lying in Toulon harbour Italy entered the war and France collapsed. The Norwegian captain ran his ship across the Mediterranean to Orsin, where the crew had a quayside view of the action by the British Navy. The American jumped the ship at Oran, made his way to Algiers and Casablanca, and, after being held up there for three months, was repatriated as a "Canadian" by a trawler to Gibraltar. From here he secured a passage to England, where he finally achieved his purpose by being accepted for flying duties in the R.A.F.