I tried to remember the parachute landing drill upon hitting the ground. I was very dazed and was being dragged along by my billowing canopy. I was very slow to react. Eventually I came to a halt and after collapsing my chute and unclipping the harness, I stood up. I had no idea of time but found, to my great relief, that I was still in one piece, even if a bit knocked about. Both my knees were very swollen, my legs and head were gashed, and I had suffered a very painful shoulder. I could walk with difficulty and after a few steps realised I had lost one of my boots.
Slowly I was able to think about what I should do next. I had landed in a field in a semi-rural area quite close to the road. There was a stack of hay or straw nearby which seemed to be the obvious place to hide my chute and harness◦– in retrospect this location would have been obvious to the Germans as well.
I urged myself to get away from the area as quickly as possible, to stand any chance of evading capture, so I turned away from the fires of Berlin. Mistakenly, I went onto the road and was immediately challenged by two soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets. I was in no position to argue.
I was taken to a hut, not far away on the opposite side of the road, and once inside I could see the soldiers were in fact Luftwaffe personnel, more than likely members of a searchlight unit. They were quite kind to me and immediately sent for a medical sergeant who gave me a good deal of time and attention before finally dressing my gashes in paper bandages. I was given coffee and led to understand that I would be collected by higher authority shortly. I thanked them and took the opportunity of giving away some loose change from my pockets that I should not have been carrying in the first place, thinking that it could not then be used for any other purpose than as souvenirs for the several onlookers, who by this time had gathered to see the Englander.
I was taken by car to what I presumed to have been the area Headquarters of the surrounding searchlight units. I was led upstairs and ushered into a large room where I was confronted by a sergeant who, to my surprise, was holding my parachute. This was given back to me and I was told to lie down on it on the floor while the sergeant sat at a desk and listened to German military music whilst keeping a very careful eye on me for the rest of the night.
Early the next morning I was moved into a wooden hut, which was part of the living quarters of the unit’s personnel. They showed great interest in me as they went about their off-duty tasks. It would be stand down time now, I thought, as the hut was occupied by some eight or ten men. They were generally kind to me and I was surprised by how many of them could attempt some English conversation. I was told by more than one of them, ‘For you the war is over.’ They all sounded quite envious, I thought.
In the early afternoon I was told that I was to be collected and taken into Berlin, and, in a short while, I was escorted into the street. It was only at this stage that I became aware that the unit was based inside a pub, which accounted for the smell about which I had been wondering.
Despite a great feeling of trepidation, I was delighted to see at the kerbside the longest Mercedes car I had ever seen, with two very smart looking Luftwaffe officers in the front, and, seated in the back, David Alletson, showing all the arrogance of Field Marshal Goring himself. Despite his bandaged head he grinned broadly upon seeing me being escorted out. (We later discovered that although Bob Brown had also managed to get out, he was wounded quite badly in the legs and so would have been taken to a hospital.)
Seeing our exchange one of the officers immediately took out his pistol and challenged in good English, ‘So you two know each other?’ We hoped we had convinced him otherwise. The officer in the passenger seat nursed his pistol for the whole of the journey and we were forbidden to speak to each other.
As we were driven to Tempelhof Airfield we were pleased to notice quite a lot of bomb damage along the way and also, on arrival, to find the airfield buildings were also showings signs of damage. I think we spent two nights at Tempelhof, in a cellar, and were later joined by several other RAF aircrew, mostly looking as knocked about as we were.
The whole party was then moved off by train to Frankfurt am Main and taken to Dulag Luft for interrogation. I must recount an incident during the journey that could have been very nasty for all of us. We had been travelling in ordinary passenger trains and had been warned, by those of our escort who could speak English, to conceal our identities as much as possible because the civilian population were extremely hostile towards Allied airmen.
This we managed to do until nearly at the end of the journey. We were awaiting road transport at Frankfurt station to take us to Dulag Luft, when a railway plate-layer leapt up from the track and aimed a blow with his hammer at one of our party. This incident drew the attention of many of the other civilians on the crowded platform and they surged en masse towards us with obvious intentions. Fortunately, the sergeant in charge of the escort, or feldwebel as I was beginning to learn, was quick to sum up the situation, and pushed us all against a wall while arranging his men in the front of us, forming a protective semicircle.
The escort raised their automatic weapons to keep the irate civilians at bay. After what seemed an age, and by making it quite clear, even to our non-German ears, that he would not hesitate to open fire, the feldwebel was able to disperse the crowd. I will always be grateful to that man, although I can now well appreciate the feelings of those civilians. Looking back, presumably he was just anxious to deliver us in one piece to the infamous Dulag Luft, the place we had heard so much about from intelligence during aircrew training.
Chapter 3
Interrogation
Dulag Luft was a specialised transit camp set up by the Luftwaffe, in the suburbs of Frankfurt am Main, to interrogate all captured Allied airmen before they were transferred to the permanent camps dotted around German territory.
We were informed during aircrew training about some of the methods used by the staff there to extract the information they were seeking. During lectures given by RAF Intelligence, we were constantly assured by them that, according to the Geneva Convention, name, number and rank were the only details a prisoner of war was obliged to disclose to the enemy. However, we were also warned how skilled the interrogators at Dulag Luft would be in gaining the information they were seeking, and how they might get a prisoner to talk; typically, pretending friendship and showing what would appear to be a genuine concern that ‘your folks at home would not know that you were safe’.
‘We could inform them,’ they might say, ‘but we must have a few more details to make this possible.’ Then as the conversation went on, questions like, ‘What was your squadron?’, ‘What type of aircraft were you in?’, ‘What was your bombload?’ and ‘What was your target?’, would be slipped in when you were off your guard.
‘Don’t get drawn into a seemingly innocent conversation’, was the strong advice always given. We were also warned of the extensive use of microphones at Dulag Luft and, shockingly, the presence of one or two RAF personnel who had turned traitor. Still wearing their uniforms, they mingled with new prisoners, trying to get information for their German masters. Absolutely disgraceful, but true.
Benefiting from being forewarned, I felt prepared for that type of interrogation when it came. However, all due to my own carelessness, I was to be subjected to something quite different. Before going to briefing for the raid, I took the opportunity to have a wash and came away leaving my identity discs hanging on a peg in the washroom. I did not miss them until just before take-off, and did not mention the fact to anyone, as it was too late to do anything about it. Little did I know then what the consequences of this would be, as it was to be used very strongly against me at Dulag Luft.