- Contributed by听
- 大象传媒 Scotland
- People in story:听
- Corporal Jim Younie
- Location of story:听
- El Alamein
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A4164996
- Contributed on:听
- 07 June 2005
This story was submitted to the People's war site by Helen Oram, Scotland csv on behalf of Jim Younie and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
We were bombed by Stukas and machine-gunned by their Messerschmitt 109 escorts.
A few minutes later, a single plane came in, flying at 400 feet. Thinking it was enemy aircraft, everybody opened up fire on him. The pilot dipped his wings to show that he was friendly, but regretfully by then we had shot him down. He baled out but his parachute didn't open because he was so low. He bounced about 30 feet and hit the deck. Sadly he was killed - a 19 year old pilot.
It took us ages to get over that, even though we had been involved in fighting the enemy for weeks.
To this day I can hardly believe that I got through the entire war without injury. So many of my comrades were killed or injured. I can only put it down to pure luck.
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