Roy Macdonald

There we were sat in chairs in the middle of the room whilst they all got on with what they were doing, while I carried on dripping water all over the floor. We were offered no drink at all or anything to eat as far as I remember.

v.l.n.r Peter Balson, Jim Rogers en Roy Macdonald sunbathing

.About noon, the door opened to admit another enormous Dutch policeman with a stovepipe hat, and who did he have with him? non but Don Alexander the rear gunner!! He entered quite jauntily, and was wearing a blue roll neck pullover and a pair of black pinstripe trousers, and was carrying a cardboard box under one arm.

The Field Officer in charge who was seated at his desk looked at the box and said to Alex "Was is los?" at which Alex plonked the box on his desk, opened the top and said "Cherries, would you like one!!!" The Officer was not amused, the box was confiscated and not seen again.

We just sat there until some time in the afternoon when we were taken by car again to a barracks in the town. We got out of the car outside on the road and were met by three Luftwaffe Officers who repeated the questions about how many engines did our aircraft have and what target we had bombed, to which they got the usual shrugs and "we don't know", and so, with a couple of kicks up the backsides we were led into the barracks and put into a cell with a sloping sort of bench covered with a palliasse filled with wood shavings.

There were two other airmen already in the cell, but we never knew who they were as we were reluctant to say much just in case they weren't who they seemed to be. All we did was to tear off our brevets (which indicated what our jobs were on the aircraft) for no other reason than to frustrate the Germans. We remained in this cell until about midnight when the door opened and we heard the word which we were to hear many times in the next two years "Komm."

So, out we went into the corridor which had a fully armed soldier every five yards, along to the entrance hall where there was a group of Officers to whom we were taken. and who were surrounded by a ring of soldiers who extended out of the door, both sides of the entrance drive and round a lorry which was waiting at the kerb. There must have been about fifty armed soldiers altogether, to look after five bedraggled airmen, and I couldn't help laughing when the senior Officer said, "Please to understand. Any attempt to escape and you will be shot!! I remember saying to Alex that we'd have to be bloody Houdini to get out of this situation.

We boarded the lorry and were all seated on a bench with our backs to the cab. Two armed soldiers sat on either side of the truck, and a Sergeant sat on the tailboard of all places with a revolver pointed at us all the time. Watching him bump up and down on the tailboard and the revolver bob up and down was just a little daunting! Eventually we arrived at an airfield called Uden, where we were put into solitary cells in a corridor closed off by a real gaol type barred gate.

About three o'clock in the morning my stomach seemed to be in a state of shock, and I realized that unless I could get to a toilet (the cell contained nothing but a cot) the situation has all the makings of a disaster. There was an emergency handle near the door which I pulled, and in due course a guard appeared and I said to him "Toilet". He looked quite shocked and looked at his watch, tapped it whilst looking at me and said "Nein, morgen".

Well, I didn't have to be a German scholar to understand that so I looked at him with what I thought was an urgent and appealing look and once again said "Toilet". "Nein, nein, morgen" he repeated and by this time I was getting really desperate so I raised one leg and blew a tremendous raspberry and said again "Toilet"!!! A wonderful look of understanding spread over his face and he replied "Ah, abort, Ja, Komm". Apparently using the word toilet led him to believe that I just wanted to wash my hands, I ask you, at three in the morning?

Anyway, we were there for about a week. No exercise, not allowed out of the cell except when one particular corporal was on duty. He was a really nice bloke and wore what I believe was a 1936 Olympic Boxing medal on his right pocket. When he was on duty, so long as the main barred gate was locked, he would open all the cell doors and let us mingle and chat, and even gave us his seven cigarettes a day ration as he didn't smoke! When we eventually left there, he happened to be on duty, and shook us all by the hand and wished us all good luck. I really would like to know what happened to him. I hope that he survived.

We were taken by truck to the railway station at Boxtel and thence by train to Amsterdam.         All the platforms had been cleared but one unfortunate Dutchman, a big chap but I think a little weak in the head, was standing at the top of the stairs looking at us. A sergeant spotted him and with no warning just spun him round and kicked him down the stairs. We then went by buses to a large Barracks which apparently was a collection place for aircrew.

There I was parted from George and Alex who I think were put on the ground floor, but had the consolation of meeting Jim Rogers the Engineer which was a very pleasant surprise. We had one great pleasure whilst there, which was watching George Darling being escorted to the toilet which was the other side of the parade ground. As this was the only exercise George got, he intended to make the most of it, and did the slowest saunter possible, to the great annoyance of his guard, a little tiny man with a large rifle, with which he kept poking George to try to get him to move a little faster. Needless to say, he didn't succeed. I don't remember how long we stayed in Amsterdam maybe a week.

Then we were taken by train to Frankfurt am Main, via Bingen, where we changed trains. At Bingen, we were all on the platform waiting for the Frankfurt train, about a hundred of us, when the station master started making a speech to all the other waiting passengers obviously about us, and they all started to advance down the platform towards us, headed by the station, master and the situation began to look rather ugly.       Thankfully, the commander of our escorting guards gave an order and they formed a line, with rifles at the ready, between us and the civilians, who then decided that was enough and contented themselves with hurling abuse at us.

The dis-embarking was a shambles and we were all mixed up with hordes of people getting off the train, all of whom seem to have been cherry picking and were loaded down with baskets of fruit. It was such a crush, and I found myself next to a little boy who had been separated from his mother. To prevent him being bustled about I took his hand, which he didn't seem to mind, and walked down the platform with him, only to hear a shriek and have him grabbed from me by his irate mother, who must have thought I was going to eat him!!!
 

The first day I was put into a room along with an American airman who had been shot down in Italy, and Rogers was in the adjoining room, also with an American. We wondered whether this was a ploy by the Germans to get us talking to each other about our different experiences, and whether the rooms were bugged with microphones. We looked for them without success but nevertheless were guarded in our conversation.

The second day I was moved into another building into a solitary cell, just big enough for a cot bed, the window barred and not able to be opened, and presented with the so called "Red Cross" form to fill in. As we were duty bound only to give our number, rank and name, this form was a joke, wanting to know what our jobs were in the RAF. what our pay was, what job we had in civilian life, how much we earned at that, and of course, any information regarding the squadron and the operation.

In the afternoon the interrogator returned and said that I'd left a lot unanswered. When I told him that number, rank and name was all he was getting, he laughed and said "You must think we are all stupid. I know that you come from 35 Squadron from Graveley, and that you have two Flight Lieutenants in your crew." I made no comment, and nearly burst out laughing when he said quite seriously, "You know, I think that you were an important designer of aircraft in civilian life." I just looked suitably gormless and eventually he left.
 

Nothing more happened that day, and about lunch time the next day, a very smart and handsome Luftwaffe officer came in, and in a friendly manner after giving me a cigarette said: "There is just one thing which I'm sure you won't mind telling me, how were you shot down, Flack or fighters.?" When I said I couldn't tell him he smiled and said that it was that the flack and the fighters had a sort of competition and like to keep their own scores.

I still wouldn't say anything and he got angry and asked what my job on the aircraft was, and when I was still silent he grabbed my jacket which was hanging on the corner of the bed to look at the brevet, which of course was hidden in the palliasse in the barracks at Nijmegen" . When he saw nothing there he got really mad and told me he thought I belonged to the 10lst sabotage division, and that if I didn't tell him the truth I would be taken out in half an hour and shot! I thought this was a bit much, but kept silent, whereupon he left.