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Then I stepped back out in the companionway, to the top of the stairs to the bomb aimer’s compartment. The plane’s nose was pointing down now, and the floor was more or less behind me, so I made one leap to go down hill in a hurry. As I pushed off, I got jabbed in the stomach, and just hung there.

Here’s what happened. There’s a telescoping pipe that pulls out in front of the flight engineer to rest his feet on, and shoves out of the way into the center of the aircraft. Normally Jock, the flight engineer, would have moved that out of the way, but Bob was sitting in Jock’s seat this trip, and wasn’t familiar with this practice.

I had attempted to shove that in myself and did not get it all the way in, apparently. It was sticking out about six inches or a foot, and it jabbed me in the ribs, and hung me there, and that’s what I was hanging on, and I couldn’t rest my feet on anything.

Then a big explosion came - I expect it could have been the port wing collapsing - and flung me against the starboard side of the fuselage. I hit the fuselage, and it unhooked me. Down I dropped on the glycol tank, which forms one of the two steps that lead down into the bomb aimer’s compartment, and onto my stomach with my head about two feet away from the open escape hatch.

Gravity was still holding me to the floor, but it was a steep angle. So I bent my feet up behind me and pushed off against the glycol tank, and used that as a springboard to propel myself forward with a huge leap like a frog, jumping with his hind legs, towards the hole.

But with all the violent movements the hatch had shifted out of the turret and been sucked into the opening by the pull of the air, and had become wedged corner ways in the opening. I hadn’t even noticed it.

All that went out was my head - just barely out into the slipstream. My shoulders and the rest of my body were inside the aircraft in this triangular shaped opening.

Fortunately when my head had been out I was facing backwards or the air would have blown my eyeballs out. I was going about three hundred miles per hour, and you can’t keep your eyes shut enough to keep the air out.

I thought that would be the end. It’ll be a big bang, or a silence, or a horrendous headache - just for a split second. I think that’s all it will be.

Then I got mad and started thrashing and kicking and hollering. Well, I must have moved that wedged door just enough, because I finally wiggled out.

I felt this rush of wind over my body, and both my flying boots were whisked off with the slipstream.

This huge orange and black shape went whipping on past me. I wasn’t gonna count even to one-two-three now because I knew now I must be awfully close to the ground.

I slapped my chest where my rip-cord should be … and there was no D-ring there.

No harness.

Nothing.

No parachute on at all.

And I thought – it just went through my mind in a flash, “well this is dumb”. Or maybe a bit amusing - to get out of all that and then end up without a parachute.

Just about that time something attracted my attention above me – I was going down head-first. It was a chrome buckle on my parachute harness – one of the shoulder buckles or something, and it flashed above me. And sure enough there was my harness stretched out behind and above me, and the parachute pack wobbling and spiraling behind that again.

I went to reach up, but bent my knees as I was reaching, and felt a tug at my ankles. Sure enough, it was the thigh straps, which had slipped down to my ankles and were still there.

I hadn’t realized it, but in my panic to squeeze and wriggle out of the escape hatch, my parachute harness had slipped right off my shoulders, and down my body and off my legs and caught around my ankles - which remember, no longer had any boots.

So I reached up and pulled the harness towards me hand over hand till I could reach the D-ring. Then I dug my fingers into the harness, and gave the D-ring a tremendous pull.

All of a sudden that big chute just went WHACK. A big crack, and it opened – a beautiful canopy of white.

It tore my fingers open, and cracked both my ankles together. Ended up chipping, or bruising them, or something.

Here I was hanging upside-down by my ankles. I guess I’d wound up my harness as I fell, because I saw the moon spiraling. Now that the chute had opened, the harness was unwinding.

You land in a twenty-four foot military chute at the same rate as if you were to jump from a ten foot wall onto the ground. That’s traveling. That’s why we never practiced parachute jumps. We jumped into swimming pools with our gear on, and inflated Mae West life jackets and stuff.

I was watching the moon go around, and saw something out of the corner of my eye and thought, “cripes - that looks like the roof of a house”.

A roof! It was, so I quickly grabbed for my ankles, because I didn’t want to hit head on.

I just got my head bent forward, and WHACK! I hit the ground with the back of my head and shoulders at the same time, and crumpled up.

A perfect landing, really, all things considered. If I hadn’t realized the roof was there and prepared myself, I would have been just driven straight into the ground.

I landed on what turned out to be a stubble wheat field. I didn’t know where I was. I knew I was flat on my back, but I wasn’t sure where. I could feel something trembling, a motion, and then made out it was the bomber stream disappearing overhead - several hundred bombers. You could feel it in the air, and in the ground.

Then I reached out, and felt something sharp on my wrist. Then I felt it was earth, so I grabbed a handful to see, and sure enough, that was earth. It almost brought tears to my eyes to think that, “oh, God, I’m alive”.

I realized I’d probably be taken prisoner, but at least I knew I would be alive and able to see my twenty-first birthday next month.

When I looked at my hand again I thought, “I’ve lost a finger”. I could see four white fingers and where the other should be was black. I thought it was gone.

But to my relief it wasn’t. What had happened was the ring my wife Hazel – I guess at that point she was still my future wife - had given me, had pulled right off when the chute had opened, and tore my finger up. It was covered in blood, which looked black in the moonlight.

Normally to remove a parachute you turn a big circular button on the front of the harness, which releases the four clips. But I didn’t need to worry about that because it was just lying in a heap beside me.

So next I got up, and went to bury my parachute. And this is where I started to do stupid things. I picked up a handful of dirt and walked to the middle of this big half moon spread out on the stubble, dropped it on, and went to get another handful of dirt.

Then I thought, “I’ll be here til the sun gets up, I have to get out of here fast”. So I started to run away from our plane, which had crashed nearby – it was only about 300 yards away. And did the second stupid thing.

Even through all the noise going on I could hear something behind me – a rattling noise, and I thought, “Gee, what is that?” So I turned around and I couldn’t see a thing. And I ran even faster, and there it was again, right behind me, so I thought “I’m gonna stop real quick, and turn around”. What good that would have done, I don’t know, but I did that. And tangled around my feet was a long string of wild pea-vine that had been growing in the stubble. That had been wrapped around this one ankle, and every time I moved, I would hear this stuff.

The moon was fairly bright, and when I looked up, I could see a house. There were men and women in front of it, so I thought “I won’t go to that one”. At another house nearby there was just women, so I chose the women. I thought I might be able to outrun them if they proved hostile, or something.

So I approached them, while the burning wreckage of our plane was roaring and crackling with the sound of ammunition exploding and the many oxygen cylinders going off – no bombs, yet.

Pilots were issued Smith and Wesson handguns. I had carried mine for three or four trips, I guess. Then Bert Delacour, one of the really old experienced chaps - done about fifteen trips - I think he was an Aussie, he said “don’t carry that thing with you.” I said, “Why, what’s the problem?” He said, “Can you picture you bailing out, comin’ down, and there’s about forty armed enemy soldiers down there, and you’re brandishing a revolver? What do you think’s gonna happen? You are armed. They are obliged to shoot you. Not only allowed to, but obliged to.”

I didn’t carry the gun again.

So as I approached these women, I kept my hands out. I remembered what we’d been told in lectures about bailing out in hostile territory – don’t reach for anything in your pockets – you don’t want to alarm them, and you don’t know who’s watching you.

The three women I was approaching were in their nightclothes. I said “Je suis RAF” and “Je suis Canadiennes”, and so on. They looked at each other, and they must have said something, but I couldn’t understand them talking in French. I could speak a bit – I got 80% every year in French in Aurora High School, but it’s a little different when you have to speak it outside the classroom!

They sort of accepted me, and some more people came, and then I was gradually taken to a house. There was an elderly lady in there and an elderly man. Six or eight more people crowded in, and the old man shooed some of them out. It was just a small gathering of houses – maybe four houses, but I know he was telling them to get lost, or go out.

Then they proceeded to interrogate me. About halfway through the interrogation we heard a motorcycle come roaring up and they just sort of froze. Then they grabbed me, opened a door, and swung me in backwards. My legs hit a chair, and I flopped into it. They shut my door, and answered the pounding on the front door.

It was a German officer and driver.

The farmer told them he hadn’t seen anybody, and he thought we all crashed. I couldn’t make out all of what they were saying. It was hard to hear properly. I think they were speaking French.

Anyway, the Germans went away after a bit. The French couple came and got me out. Then the lady pulled a little rug up off the floor, and a ring in the floor lifted out and I thought “oh, boy, they’re going to hide my down there - that‘s the first place the Germans’ll look.”

She went teetering down a little ladder there, and came up with a bulbous bottle of wine with dust and straw on it, and poured some for all of us. I went to drink mine, and looked at my hand, and it was just a’ jumpin’. I had to hang onto the glass with both hands to keep it from spilling.

No French farmer would think of offering just water to guests – water was for the cows. And as we soon learned, water was pretty scarce there for some reason. That might have had something to do with it.

I was shaking, and drank some wine, and looked through my clothes. Of course, I had my uniform on that said “Canada” on it, but we weren’t supposed to have anything that could identify where we came from. We’d had many lectures on security, by evaders and ex-POWs, and so on. You had to check your handkerchiefs, and make sure there weren’t any laundry marks on them. Anything that might identify your town, or home base, or divulge military intelligence. You never know; your wrecked plane could have a new type of radar in it, and the Germans would want to know where you were from.

I had a package of Sweet Caporal cigarettes, and passed them around. I noticed the old fellow took two - put one behind each ear. And I don’t think he smoked.

As I sipped a bit more wine, the motorcycle came roaring back again.

This time the old fellow got me and opened another door and there were three horses standing there under the same roof. A common thing apparently – the house was attached right to the barn.

I thought “boy, don’t put me up in the attic, they’d look in the loft, and don’t put me in the manger”.

He took me down past the horses to what I called a chop box. It was a big wooden box that had ground up grain in it, and beside that box was this great big pile of chaff – short straw. They’d already done some cutting, I guess. Or it might have been last year’s.

He backed me into the corner – it felt cold – I think it was a stone wall, and plaster. There I was flat on the floor with my head down against the chop box, and in the corner of the wall. He took a fork, and just heaved that pile of chaff on top of me. Piled it right up.

Then he went back and into the kitchen - I heard a door open. They were talking to this German. And I knew they shut the kitchen door again, because I could see a bit of light filtering in though the chaff.

So after a bit, sure enough the light comes in again – they’d opened the door. I thought, “oh, boy”. I could hear people walking now. They were coming towards me. But they stopped at one of the horses. I heard the officer grunt, or say something in German or French to the horse. He wanted him to get over. And he walked in, and I heard him pounding in the manger. He did something the same in each horse stall. Then they walked on down to the end. I’m not sure what was down there. They were down there for just a short while.

Then they came back, and I could feel the vibrations as they walked. I’m sure they stopped right in front of that pile of chaff I was under. The fork was still sitting there against the wall, and I hoped he wouldn’t pick it up and stick it into the pile. I could feel that fork going into me – all those prongs. Every one of them was going right through my ribs. Maybe the farmer would stop them. He’d have to – I’d be killed, and he would, too.

And then a thought came to me, “what if a person had to sneeze now”?

Well, why did I ever think that? I felt a sneeze coming on. And with my hands tight to my body, and my head down, how am I going to pinch my nose?

What a terrible thing to think of. Amusing? Not likely. If they’d found me I would have been a prisoner, and they’d have shot that fellow.

Then, to my great relief, I heard them going back inside the kitchen.

At that point I realized, “My God, I have the Captains of Aircraft map in my battledress pocket”. This map showed our target and route. The rest of our planes were still two hours from the target, so if the Germans found that, well, there was lots of time to phone ahead and warn the authorities. And it showed our route back.

So without disrupting the chaff – I figured they might come back and search again - I managed to wiggle it out. Then I remembered that for security we’d been told that if we were ever captured, we were supposed to eat these. Oh cripes - a sixteen by twelve inch map!

Then I felt down, and sure enough, I could feel under one corner of the chop box, and with a big sigh of relief, managed to shove it in the gap under there. You know; it may still be there today.

They talked some more in the house. The Germans probably looked through the house. Then they finally started up and drove away.

The French couple was a while coming out to get me. Then they did, and finished the interrogation, and I could hear them talking about different things. They asked me what kind of bomb load I had on. I suddenly thought of those long-delay bombs.

So I said I had “bombier retardement”. I figured that would do, and I saw them looking back and forth. Then another women came in and she said “would you speak to me in English. We might understand each other better”.

I don’t know where she came from but they brought her in to interrogate me some more. Then she told me about three young boys very badly hurt – one even blinded – when a bomb went off the day before from one of our other bombers that went down there. Of course, I then realized why they were so interested in what type of bombs we had on board.

I was taken then to an outdoor shed not too far away. A two-wheeled oxcart was in there with partial sheaves of grain on it. He laid me right down on the bare earth floor beside it, and reached up, and he just randomly hauled a bunch of these sheaves off. Somewhat like I’d been covered up in the house.

He told me to stay there. Don’t move. Don’t come out at all until somebody comes out and tells you to come out.

About four in the morning I heard the bombers coming back. At that point they were only a little over a mile away – 7,000 feet up in the air. Right over our heads. And I thought in another two hours the crews’ll be sitting down after briefing, to bacon and eggs.

Lying there under that hay, oh, I never felt so lonely.

Two hours later the farmer came and got me, the same guy who put me in the barn. He spoke a little English, and told me we were going to another house. But he was cautious. He would walk ahead of me, and if he took out his handkerchief, it was okay for me to cross the road and follow him. If he kept on going, I had to stay hidden at the last place he left me. That was the rule all the way on this march we did.

So we started walking across this field of grain stacks, and came to one, and he stopped, and he looked around, and pulled back a sheaf, and there’s Ben, our wireless operator, crouching down under there. That’s the first we knew at least of two of us were still alive.

We were lead to a house on the side of a paved road. We were ushered in and vouched for by our escort. The owners’ last name was Arthur, and we called them Mom and Pop. She had two boys there in one room who we first thought were her sons. Then we found out one was an Englishman and one was a Canadian flier, who had been shot down the night before! She couldn’t keep four of us in there, so Ben and I ended up in their haystack.

She’s the one who made us all an eighteen egg omelette. Was it ever good.

Then for lunch, she made us tripe. Not the most appetizing looking stuff, and what a smell. It just reeked. I could eat it, but Ben, he couldn’t handle it too well. He was trying to smile, but he kept giving it to the Arthur’s little dog, Suzette. It was a little black and white spotted short haired dog – a terrier of some kind. Guess he gave her all of it, because the lady came along, and Ben was smiling as if he liked it, and she went and got him another helping. I said “she’s asking you if you enjoyed it”, and he said, “oh yes, it tastes just like cow flops”.

Well, the rest of us just about exploded. Of course, she couldn’t understand English.

While we were eating lunch, one of our 500 pound delayed bombs went off. It had been on a nine hour delay. It was out in the field, and what a boom. Shook the house. And Suzette started shaking, too.

When we went to the window, we could see a piece of our plane fluttering down. It was the covering of number one fuel tank – a big sheet metal piece.

After the war, I heard that some locals had tried to defuse the bombs in our wreckage, and three men were killed in an explosion, and a fourth man, 100 yards away, was hit by debris and died a few days later. Whether that was from the same explosion we heard then, I don’t know.

The Arthur’s house was a road house, I guess you’d call it. The Germans would stop there for water and to buy eggs. I didn’t mind them selling the eggs to them, because what else could they do? The Arthurs would see the Germans coming and whistle, and we’d hide out in the straw stacks. Each of us in individual ones. Goin’ in feet first, and lying on our stomachs, and we could peer out.

One day the Germans surprised us in the house, and we had to hide in the bedroom, and keep very quiet. Gaw - I was just in a sweat!

Another time we were hiding in the little orchard – it was only one hundred feet wide – when a truckload of camouflaged German workmen came out and stopped right in front of the orchard. They walked in there under the trees to relieve themselves, and we were hiding in there. Ooo – that was close.

They gave us a basin to wash in outside the house. They had been able to get a hold of those slimy soap cakes we had in our escape kits. I don’t know why, but water was very scarce there at the time. They told us not to throw it out, so we used it for two or three days. By the time we left it was pretty thick and slimy – it probably wouldn’t have run, even if we had tried to pour it!

It was while we were at the farmhouse that Pop Arthur took me aside and told me “Giffin est morte”. Apparently, Bob had landed alive, but he was so badly riddled, that he died from loss of blood shortly after.

Shortly after that, we had a one bit of good news. The farmer came in one day, and he was grinning, and I knew something was up, and he looked around to make sure there was no strange person in the house, and he brought in Jock and Jonesy.

That’s when we found Jonesy had been hit by shrapnel when we were shot down. We pulled some out of his legs. It was getting infected. He had quite a bit in his legs and under his armpits. I was kidding him. I said “tell me, how does one get shot under their arms, unless they have their hands up covering their face in the face of danger.” He smiled at that. He limped a bit, but it was just superficial. It was just sore.

Jonesy said that as soon as he landed after parachuting out of the plane, he heard somebody hollering at him. He thought it was in German, so he started running, and when he looked around, there was this person running after him, so he ran faster. And then he came to a fence, and as he was trying to get over the fence the person called him a “crazy bah-stard” and told him to come back here. It was Jock. In the dark, and with his adreline a-pumpin’, Jonesy had mistaken Jock’s heavy Scottish accent as German.

As if the constant German patrols weren’t enough to keep us on our toes, the Arthur’s house was right under the take-off runway for a Junkers 88 squadron. Maybe even the same ones that shot us down.

The planes were only about 500 feet above us - the wheels were still turning around on the planes as they went over our heads, and we would see the huge antennas, and the pilots’ brown helmets. We had to stay in the house out of sight and remain still, or if we were caught outside, and couldn’t get to the house or a haystack to hide in, we would grab a pitchfork or something and try to blend in.

After a while Jonesy said, “You know skipper, I could hit one of those buggers with a rock.”

I said, “You what?!” And he probably could have. They were so low, and he was an active guy. I said, “For God sakes, don’t you dare. What would happen to all these people?” It scared me, it did. I thought he was gonna do it.

After about three days, Mom Arthur couldn’t afford the risk of keeping us any longer, as the Germans were searching more and more. Hitler had made an edict that there would be no more sympathy for the people who shielded fliers – they would be shot, and the fliers too. There were too many fliers escaping to Spain, and to a place on the coast there.

The night before we moved there was a bit of activity and the odd strange visitor. We weren’t sure what was happening, but we soon found out - we were to go on a long march to a new camp in the woods. This was around July 31st.

We left around noon. We had to agree to go in civilian clothes. It would be foolhardy to appear in daylight with our uniforms on. And there was a curfew in place in that area of occupied France, so we couldn’t go at night. That’s why we went in the daytime.

We were paired up, and I was with Jonesy. He kept saying to me what he was supposed to say if we were accosted, and I’d say “je ne sais pas”. Later he said, “what was that ‘jerry’ thing I was supposed to say?” And I said it was best to say nothing.

Jonesy was limpin’, his leg swelled up a bit. It was a hot summer. We weren’t worried about it - they weren’t going to have to amputate it or anything, but it made it hard to walk. So they got him a bike. He would coast down the hills, and push it up.

We were told not to talk to anybody, or wave at anybody, as we walked. At one point a horse and buggy caught up to us with three men in it. Well, I’ll be damned, when this buggy passed us, this guy in the middle turned around and put his hand up slightly, and it was Sam. He got a ride, the bugger.

Another time we saw a tower of dust being raised in the distance. It was a black car – a big one. We were near a culvert, and we hid there. They must have seen us, but they didn’t stop. They were traveling quite fast. We think it was some German officers fleeing the area.

They didn’t have any water to send with us, but before we left, Mom Arthurs gave Jock, Jonesy and I each a bottle of wine to take with us. Everybody had one. We drank ours in the first hour, it was so hot. I got badly sunburned.

We came to a field, and there was on open wooden bucket for the sheep. We went over to see if there was water in it. The water had green scum over the top of it, though. We just scraped the scum back, put the bottle down in it, and filled it up. We had halizone tablets, with chlorine in them. We were to put one in, shake it, and leave it for twenty minutes, before we drank it. We put about four in, shook it for twenty seconds, and drank it right down – we were so thirsty.

I don’t remember us taking any food with us, but we did stop at a safe house along the way. The lady there brought out this big stone bowl with chunks of pork in it with white fat all over. We also had some cheese in a cloth bag. There were little wiggling things in it – looked like little maggots – I don’t know what they were. Someone tried to assure me they were harmless to eat. Well, we ate them anyway. I guess they didn’t hurt.

Since I had lost my boots, the Arthurs had given me some wooden clogs. I had to get rid of them soon into this long walk. They just cut into my feet – they were too small for me. Then the lady at the safe house gave me a pair of panko soles – composition rubber. Both were cracked on the bottom, and that just wore blisters and broke them open. My feet were sloshing in blood – they looked terrible. The cuts weren’t deep, but very uncomfortable. I had to walk in the sand or grass at the side of the road. I wanted to keep going to this camp, because we were going to be safe when we got into this forest.

Later in the day – it must have been after six or eight hours of walking – maybe 20 miles - the sun was still up, but it was August and the days were longer – we could see the forest ahead. Only about a mile away. As we drew closer, we could see a figure standing at a small crossroad up ahead - what we thought was an American GI in his fatigues uniform – olive drab colour. We were talking about it, and hadn’t hollered to him yet, when Jonesy and I realized at the same time it was a German soldier. He was not armed. I guess he was waiting for someone. But we had to walk right past him. I can’t remember if we nodded to him, but that was pretty disconcerting.

Shortly afterwards, we reached the Freteval Forest and were met by the welcoming committee. Chappie was there too, along with about one hundred and fifty other downed Allied airmen.

This would be our home for the next three weeks … in the middle of occupied territory … surrounded by Germans … under constant aerial and artillery bombardment … with the threat of being discovered at any moment …

But that’s another story.

Postscript:

Earl “Judy” Garland had taken two shells through his leg during the fighter attack, and was taken prisoner shortly after parachuting out of the stricken bomber. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.

Bob Giffin, who died shortly after bailing out, was buried in the St Cloud-en-Dunois Communal Cemetery in France (photo of Giffin's grave at right).

Alex “Red” Campbell, Ben Lyons, Sam Harvey, Earl “Jonesy” Jones, Jack “Chappie” Chapman and Jock Donaldson spent three weeks in the Freteval forest before being rescued by the advancing Allies. All of them returned to England and then home. Campbell was back in Ontario in mid-October 1944, and married his fiancé two weeks later.

Leutnant Strassner, the German pilot of the Ju88 that shot down the bomber that night, survived the war. Campbell attempted to contact him in 2002, but Strassner had passed away 5 years earlier.

The remains of Lancaster bomber A2-C were dumped in a quarry near Au Villiers, where they remain today.