BACK FROM DEAD

Opotiki News, Volume III, Issue 316, 27 September 1940, Page 2

BACK FROM DEAD

AIR FORCE PILOT HOODWINKED THE NAZIS PERILOUS ADVENTURES LONDON, June 7. —Posted as missing for nearly a fortnight, a Royal Air Force fighter pilot has returned to his squadron in Britain still disguised as a Belgian peasant refugee, after a series of extraordinary adventures culminating in his arrest by the French authorities'. It took him 12 days to get back from the point near the Belgian frontier where he was forced down by enemy fighters, said an Air Ministry news bulletin. For 10 days he made his way in hi s refugee disguise across country from far behind the German lines, passing through the German front by crawling through long grass for more than a mile to a canal. He obtained most of his food from German soldiers, spending his nights in cattle sheds and outhouses, always fearing that his identity might be discovered by the numerous German troops, who so often questioned him and the other refugees with whom he travelled.

Knowledge of French His knowledge of French saved him from many a desperate situation. He passed himseif olf to Frenchmen and Germans as a Belgian refugee, and to Belgians as a Frenchman. Wnen his Hurricane fighter was forced down after he hail engaged several enemy aircraft, the pilot found a Deigiian willing to lend him some clothest—a battered old hat, pipe-like trousers nearly Cm. ■ too short lor him, a dirty grey jacket and an ancient light grey overcoat. Ho- kept his regulation blue shirt, but put on an old collar with nis black tie. Once he borrowed a car to drive Belgian refugees through the German lines, but Nazis took the vehicle after only a few miles, and his pilgrimage continued. Boiled Eggs and Coffee “I lived for days on boiled eggs, coffee and water," said the pilot on his return. “Occasionally 1 called at a'farmhouse or country cottage to seek shelter. Most of the Belgians witn whom I travelled guessed that I was-English, but they did not give cne away. 1 was advised to talk as little as possible when Germans appeared, tor they told me that my French had a terrible English accent. When I found the Belgians moving back toward Belgium i tagged myself on to parties of French peasants.

“Incidentally I owe my final escape to the Royal Air Force. I was in the outskirts of Dunkirk, and I had to pass* through the Germanpatrolled area at the back of the town. Every few hundred yards the Germans had sentries posted along the roads, so that it was impossible for anyone to get by. Terrific Air Battle “But'One day there was a terrific air battle. 1 could see Hurricanes and Messerschmitts and Heinkels and Spitfires doing their stuff. It was a brilliant show, and the sentries thought so,- too. They were looking skywards when I slipped through. When I reached the canal I called across to a group of French soldiers, and crossed the canal in a small boat. . “I was arrested by the French on suspicion. The guard passed me on to the lieutenant to a major, and so up that scale until I was put before a general. I told him who I was, where I came frem, and eventually I was passed on to the British authorities in Dunkirk. “There again I was suspected, though I was treated extremely well. A naval commander took charge of me, and I was technically under arrest until I had been brought to England in a motor torpedo-boat, questioned at the Admiralty, and later at the Air Ministry, where my identity was finally established. “People who saw me in London must have thought I was either a spy of a fifth- columnist, or something like that. They looked at mo very strangely.”