大象传媒

This is story about my husband - James Ramsay Roe. He joined the air force in 1943 at the age of 18 and, like everybody else, wanted to be a pilot. But, there were too many so he had to train as an Air Gunner. As soon as he finished his training he became operational and was sent to India where he was on 358 squadron - a special operations squardon dropping supplies and more importantly agents into enemy territory.
He had finished his tour of ops and was due to be repatriated, when he was asked if he would do one more trip to screen the despatcher on another plane. They were told there was no chance of enemy fire in that area. So they set off and after about 6 hours they were nearing the DZ when suddenly 7 Japaneese fighters appeared and proceeded to shoot the plane to pieces. The pilot, who was Canadian, was injured and he decided the only way he could get the plane down was to use an operation used by bush pilots which involved flying between two trees and shearing the wings off. They were carrying three agents at the time. One of the agents was seriously injured and three of the crew were killed. The pilot sheared the wings off and landed. They got out and assessed the damage.
My husband lost consciousness because when he came round he was some distance away from the others. He was in a Liberator and they used to fill every spare inch of space in the wings with ping-pong balls so that if they had to make an emergency landing in water the plane would float. In his confused state he thought it was imperative to gather up the balls!
When he joined the others it was obvious from their faces they thought he had been killed!
They started to make their way out and luckily one of the agents spoke a bit of Siamese. Then they heard voices and had to hide. They saw it was local people and the agent went and talked to them. They were friendly and took them to their village, fed them, and looked after them for a while. The next morning an officer of the Siamese police came and took the pilot, the one member of the crew, and the two surviving agents away. My husband and the rest of the surviving crew were left in the village. They were rescued the day after and they turned up in a prison in Bangkok where their injuries were treated.
This happened in May 1945, and in August some rumours started to go around the camp about a bomb that had been dropped. Early one morning the American OSS came to the prison and got them out. Eventually they were repatriated to the UK in September 1945.

After 40 years my husband managed to find the Canadian pilot he had been shot down with. They met - he came to the UK and they went to Cosforth. They let Harry (the pilot) get into the Liberator and he said "It's shrunk". My husband picked up one of the guns and he could hardly lift it up!

In 1992 we spent Christmas in the USA. We spent Christmas Day at the Holiday Inn in Vermont and we were looking through the programme of activities to decide what to do. One item was a video presentation about Christmas memories in Vermont. It was given by a man called Chubb Condict and it said if there are any Burma veterans in the hotel he would be very pleased to see them. So we decided to go. We walked in and there was Chubb and my husband introduced himself and where he was stationed - Jessore. And Chubb asked him if he remembered about a Librartor that was shot down and James said "I was in it". Chubb was so excited and asked him all about it. He said he was working with the OSS and he arranged the escape!

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