大象传媒

Easier By The Minute Part 2

A chivalrous enemy dipped their wings and flew on northwards. As the Luftwaffe machines diminished to soundless dots in the distant blue and silence returned to the German countryside, Peter wondered if this foe had broken off the pursuit of his doomed aircraft, giving a fellow airman a chance to save himself.

He returned his gaze to the ground; he had floated clear of the forest. The burning column was only half a mile away. The dogfight had not drifted far. The red-brown furrows of a freshly ploughed field rushed up towards him. Peter crumpled in the soil.
As he staggered to his feet a host of slave labourers came running from the neighbouring fields. He painfully hit the chute buckle. The billowing canopy pulled the straps away from his body. Wisps of smoke drifted from the padded seat beneath the parachute bag as it was dragged bumping across the ruts. He knew he could only have been seconds from the fire reaching the parachute itself. Whatever happened now, it was all bonus - somehow, much against the odds and despite the severe burns to his hands and face, he鈥檇 survived.

The closing hordes split in two, the women pouncing on the flapping silk, shredding it in seconds; the men surrounding the wounded airman. Peter鈥檚 charred and useless hands began to shake uncontrollably. A jabbering Czech, fingers encrusted with soil, understood Peter鈥檚 pleading and gently reached inside his burnt tunic, pulling out his cigarette case, lighting one and holding it to Peter鈥檚 lips. He led the ragged group along a field-side path towards the farmhouse.

After a few minutes, through the slits of his swelling eyelids, Peter could see a rotund soldier plodding towards them - he was going to be a prisoner of war.

As the soldier met the group the Slavs closed ranks around the helpless Englishman, pushing away the German鈥檚 attempts to reach him. The soldier made no attempt to unshoulder his rifle and resignedly let the group past.

Peter was left with the farm owner. The 35 year-old had worked for Lord Roxburgh in Scotland before the war and spoke good English, he got Peter into a bed on the ground floor of the farmhouse, doing what he could for the wounded airman. The German knew what it was like, he had been wounded in the knee at Dunkirk and invalided out of the army.

Within less than an hour, two tall, blonde Hitler Youth were at the foot of the bed firing a string of incomprehensible questions at the farmer. Throwing sneering glances at Peter one of them repeatedly cocked his Luger. The fear Peter had felt at the approaching Focke-Wulfs as he hung helplessly in his 鈥榗hute, roared again in his mind. Was he going to be shot in cold blood by a kid after getting this far?

The conversation ended abruptly and the uniformed teenagers left the room. Peter guessed it wouldn鈥檛 be long before they were back.

In the evening a middle-aged Viennese doctor was brought to the farmhouse to treat him. She was professional and unhostile.
She intimated that his engagement ring would have to be cut away to have any chance of saving his swollen finger. The farmer slipped out of the room, returning with a neighbour carrying a pair of bolt cutters.
After some agonising manoeuvring the ring was removed. Peter鈥檚 burns were dusted with antiseptic powder and he was left alone for the night.

Although in pain, he was unfazed by the extent of his injuries or his predicament. As he stared into the darkness and the day鈥檚 maelstrom of terrifying images rushed through his mind for the thousandth time, he just couldn鈥檛 believe he was still alive - nothing else mattered.

He came round in the middle of the night desperate to urinate. They had made no provision for him and, unable to shuffle more than a few steps from the bed and barely able to handle himself, was forced to relieve himself in the corner of the spartan room.

The following day the farmer鈥檚 daughter, a pretty girl in late adolescence, tended to Peter, bringing a schnapps and raw egg - the local cure-all. Through the following nights two of the Slavs sat with him, bringing ersatz coffee and finding cigarettes made from coarse tobacco dust. Peter appreciated their kindness. For these people they must have been rare luxuries. There was no doubting whose side they were on.

Each morning the farmer鈥檚 ageing father, a proud man who had served the Kaiser in the 14-18 war and seemed to consider himself an expert on all matters military, kindly came to the bedroom armed with a map, pointing out the positions of the armies.

Early Tuesday morning, with Peter鈥檚 wounds now septic and stinking, despite another visit from the over-stretched doctor, the old man came to his bed, explaining that SS units had dug-in on the nearby Autobahn. Peter braced himself for another twist of fate.

They heard distant artillery through the morning, but none was close. Just after eleven, two giants in blue-grey uniforms burst into the room ahead of the farmer - the SS had found him.

Peter would never forget the words he heard next -
鈥淵ou all right, laddie. Are they treating you all right?鈥� the elder of the two enquired in the tones of a brusque Scottish country schoolmaster.
鈥淵es, they鈥檙e treating me all right.鈥� Peter faltered.
The man shoved the German across the room.
鈥淭hey better be laddie, they鈥檇 better be.鈥�
The German began pleading desperately not be sent down the diamond mines.
Reassuring the begging man, Peter told his compatriots that the farmer had done all he could to help. He asked incredulously who his saviours were, explaining that he thought they were SS.
They were a British Forward Ambulance Unit and had got word that a wounded allied airman was in the farmhouse.

The ordeal was over. Peter was taken to Celle where he spent the night, before being transferred to Brussels. He was going to have plenty of time for reflection.

He had been lucky. From the moment Yellow Section had been bounced his fate had been studded with good fortune.
Why had the first Focke-Wulf missed such a sitting duck and where had it gone? Had Peter鈥檚 falling drop tanks, by some freak, struck the German aircraft? Why had none of the Luftwaffe gunfire hit the cockpit of the Tempest when the odds were so much in their favour? How had he managed to bail out without being shot in the back or tumbling into the propeller of a pursuing aircraft? Why was the 鈥檆hute intact when everything else was burned?

There would also be time to reflect on the bizarre: the scramble for the silk from his spent canopy; the apathetic soldier who chose not to use his rifle, perhaps having one eye on the end of the war; the Hitler Youth who never returned; the uniforms of the British Forward Ambulance Unit; the beaten German farmer who had shown nothing but kindness.

Peter knew how lucky he had been. Many allied pilots had been shot out-of-hand after bailing out behind the lines. None of it would ever be explained - nor could it be. It was just the way the kaleidoscope of fate had turned鈥� It was how war was. And on that clear spring day, the colours of the turning kaleidoscope had shone brightly on a young English airman.

Peter eventually found himself at RAF Cosford only twenty miles from his family鈥檚 home. A nurse volunteered to telephone his parents; they had still not heard that he had been found.
His elated mother was at his bedside within two hours, picking out her son as soon as she walked onto the ward by a tell-tale lock of hair protruding from the bandages around his burnt face.

His mother and sister had stayed on in Bournemouth until Tuesday 16th April, in the vain hope that he might appear. His father had received the telegram posting Peter as 鈥楳issing in Action鈥� at the family home in Kings Norton that morning and immediately drove down to find them. Peter鈥檚 parent鈥檚 marriage had broken down into near hostility and the appearance of his father charging down the Dorset beach madly waving a piece of paper, meant only one thing. They all returned to Birmingham that day.

Peter鈥檚 face healed completely, although he lost the finger on his left hand. The use of two other fingers was also severely impaired. The only place where hair grew again on his left arm, was in the neat shape of a wristwatch. Luckily, he didn鈥檛 suffer the emotional nightmares that many experience after the trauma of being wounded in combat, and led a happy and balanced family life.
He never let his injuries hamper him and enjoyed the pleasures of playing village cricket for many years, being an able opening batsman. He also maintained a respectable golf handicap well into retirement.

Peter鈥檚 engagement came to nothing and he married Betty Kettle in February 1949. They had three sons the eldest of which is father to two sons himself; their second son, author of this piece, is married and hoping to eke out a living as a writer; their third son is a high-flying financier.
Peter and Betty divorced in 1993, but remarried in January 1998.

Not long after the war Peter鈥檚 father, Ronald, found the German farming family who had looked after his son, although a 1987 attempt by Peter himself, failed.

Of the action that day: Captain Thompson limped back to Kluis and crash-landed. He received a bar to his DFC. Dutchman, ter Beek, returned to base unscathed only to be shot down and taken prisoner on the 24th April. The new pilot to the Squadron, Sgt Staines, was killed in the action.
Little is known of the German casualties that day although it is believed that the aircraft belonged to 1/JG26. Oberleutenant Hans Dortenmann was credited with destroying Peter鈥檚 Tempest, taking his tally up into the middle thirties. It is not known if the gallant Oberleutenant survived the war.

A few minutes after 4 a.m. on Monday the 22nd February 1999, as heavy snow fell outside his Birmingham home, Peter died peacefully in his sleep after a long struggle against leukaemia.

漏 Copyright Simon Paul Watton 1999

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