A Special Duty

by Jennifer Elkin

  Eddie remained alongside the skipper as they crossed the Adriatic and then, as they approached Yugoslavia, he went forward to his position in the nose to get the navigator an exact pinpoint when they crossed the coast. Hap was a good navigator and didn’t need much correction but Eddie, from his prone position looking down at the ground, would call out whether they were to port, starboard, or dead on course – he was proud of his nickname, ‘pinpoint elk’, and assisted by map reading every inch of the way. From time to time, Charlie Keen, twenty years-of-age and the youngest of the crew, took an astrofix through the bubble roof of his engineer’s position and Tom, while constantly searching the sky for other aircraft, also kept a lookout ahead for landmarks to assist in navigational fixes. He imposed strict discipline in the air and permitted no idle chat over the intercom, which was reserved for procedural matters. This protocol was strictly adhered to by the crew, who had been in enough tight scrapes to know that discipline in the air mattered. Night fighters had rarely been encountered during Balkan operations, but the flight-path to Poland exposed the solitary and fully-loaded aircraft to attack by enemy fighters based in Hungary and Romaniaiii, and to German anti-aircraft batteries located around Budapest. Gunner Jim Hughes needed to be able to alert the skipper immediately if evasive action was required – they flew alone and without fighter escort, so the rear gunner was their first and only line of defence.

  Weather worsened for all the crews once they were airborne and, although most of the aircraft ploughed on for hours through the difficult conditions, eventually, lack of visibility, icing on the aircraft, or excessive fuel consumption forced most of them to abandon the attempt. One-by-one, fifteen of the crews turned for home without dropping their supplies, among them the Chalk crew, who had reached the Slovakia-Poland border before turning back with heavy icing, and half their fuel load used up.iv As an added complication for the returning crews, they were unable to land back at Brindisi because of the strong crosswinds that had developed while they were airborne, and they were all diverted to Manduria, an American base east of Taranto. The Storey crew pressed on, their progress punctuated by intense bursts of squally rain that lashed the windscreen, and by dense cloud banks that threw the aircraft around and reduced visibility. The skies cleared briefly as they crossed the Danube, leaving Budapest on the starboard side and, once over the Carpathian Mountains, they descended from 13,000ft to 3,000ft in an attempt to get beneath the low cloud on the Polish plain.

  At 2,000ft, Tom was forced to shut down the port inner engine. It was getting dangerously hot and the oil pressure was dropping. To reduce drag he feathered5 the engine and then, over the intercom, Hap said: “Twenty minutes to drop zone skipper”. Tom gave the routine instruction: “Switch to full tanks, engineer,” which was normal procedure; all drops were done on full tanks. Charlie made his way back to the switch levers, which were located in mid fuselage by the rest position, and switched from tanks two and four to tanks one and three. Events from this point on were not routine; the aircraft was minutes away from disaster. Shortly after the tanks had been switched, and six minutes from the drop zone, Tom reported over the intercom that the port outer engine had suddenly cut dead. The Halifax was now only flying on its starboard engines, making it extremely difficult to control both course and altitude.6 To lighten the aircraft, Tom gave the order: “Jettison the load”. The containers were released from the bomb bay and Walter Davis was asked to break radio watch and help Patrick Stradling (despatcher) to jettison the internal load. The last words he heard before unplugging his headset were the skipper asking the navigator: “What’s the distance to the Russian Front?”v He sprinted back, taking his parachute pack with him, and helped the despatcher to push out the packages, but events were overtaking them. The aircraft was losing height fast and, struggling to hold a course, Tom tried to restart the port outer engine, and then the inner engine, but to no avail. He shouted: “Engineer, did you switch those tanks?” Charlie confirmed that he had, but was asked to go back and check. Realizing that he couldn’t make it to the Russian Front, Tom turned the Halifax to the south-east, calculating that their best chance of finding partisans was in the southern forests. As they descended over the town of Rudnik, the roar of the engines caught the attention of partisan Commander Stanislaw Belzynski,7 who was working late on the detailed plans for a raid on a German installation. He raced outside and watched the blacked-out aircraft pass like a shadow, low over the town. ‘Had it been bombing rail lines? Was it trying to land?’vi Eight miles to the south-east in Sarzyna, Bronislaw Kaminski was enjoying a glass of milk at the kitchen table of a family friend, before setting off home to Tarnogora. Through the window he spotted the flickering red and green lights of an aircraft approaching from the west.8 The lights seemed to come and go but, as it got closer, the aircraft turned south and then back to the north, getting lower all the time.

  Inside the crippled aircraft, they were at 900ft and Tom, unable to maintain height or hold the aircraft on course, gave the order: “ABANDON AIRCRAFT”. The crew immediately stopped what they were doing and clamped on their ’chutes. Walter’s calmly spoken: “Acknowledge – going out,” were the final words heard over the intercom as they jumped into the night, one after the other – Walter, Patrick, Hap, Charlie and then Jim, who went separately in a backwards fall from his rear turret. Eddie paused briefly on his way back from the nose to see if the skipper needed anything. “Hurry up; I can’t hold it any longer,” said Tom, peering back into the darkness to make sure the crew were out – no intercom connection now. As the Halifax lost height, Tom stayed behind to destroy the aircraft’s sensitive IFF equipment. “Woe betide the pilot who failed to ensure that this highly secret instrument did not fall into the hands of the enemy!”9 Then he slammed the throttles through the gate for maximum power to the starboard engines, trimmed the aircraft to climb and scrambled back over the fuselage spars, slithering over the packages still strewn around the open hatch to make his exit at around 400ft.vii Baling out this close to the ground, he must have known there was a strong chance that his parachute would not open in time to slow his descent. 400ft is dangerously low for a parachute drop.

  Heart thumping, he was immediately hit by the slipstream and pulled the ‘D’ ring at his chest to release the small pilot chute, which filled with air and pulled out the main chute. It was slow to open – seconds felt like minutes – and then he felt a sudden jolt and was swinging gently under a circular white dome. It was raining, and a Junkers 8810 passed overhead as he drifted down. None of the crew had done a parachute jump before and no amount of simulated exit procedure could prepare them for the shock of the real thing. It was dark, and Tom blinked the rain out of his eyes, straining to see if there were any trees in his path. Then bang, he was on the ground, stunned by a hard blow to his head, his legs twisted beneath him. He was aware of a momentary silence before his aircraft crashed to the ground with a dull roar, a sound also heard by Bronislaw Kaminski, the young man who had been watching the aircraft lights from the village of Sarzyna. He was now sure that the aircraft had crashed and rushed to share the news with the friends he had spent the evening with. They all set off for the clearing where they suspected the plane had come down, but then one of them suggested that the Germans might have prepared an ambush and they decided to leave it and go back in daylight. Kaminski walked home alone to Tarnogora where he met Jakub Pikula and Jan Mlynarski, who were on night watch in the village. He asked them where the plane had fallen and they said they thought it had come down in the forest.viii

  Wreckage of Halifax JP224

  (Photo courtesy of Bibliotek Nowa Sarzyna)

  Tom slowly came round. He felt dazed, his legs hurt and he stumbled about in the dark trying to release his chute and find somewhere to bury it. He was alone on a road and, as he staggered towards a nearby field, he fell into a deep, water-filled ditch and lost his grip on the parachute, which drifted away from him. His instinct was to go after it but he was too late – it was out of rea
ch. He had come down between the junction of the San and Vistula rivers, on a main road to the east of Tarnogora village, from where a couple of dim lights were just visible beyond the stream and the field. His escape aids consisted of a compass and a silk map of Europe and Poland, screwed up like a handkerchief in his pocket. These items were of little use in the dark though, and his injuries made him very vulnerable unless he could find someone to help him. He pushed his life vest into the soft earth of the field and limped towards the houses in the distance, where he started knocking on doors. Nobody answered at the first darkened houses, so he crawled through a hedge towards a building with lights on, but spotted a sentry by the gate and realized it was a German barrack house. He backed away quickly. The next person he encountered was a young man of about seventeen, who stepped out of his house just as Tom was about to knock on the door, startling them both. Desperate not to cause a commotion, Tom gripped him by the throat to keep him quiet and whispered: “RAF, English”, at which the young man, not knowing quite what to do, took him next door to the house of Jan Sowa who spoke German and might be able to help. German was widely spoken amongst the population and it was also a language that Tom had learned to speak well at Carlisle Grammar School11. He explained his situation to Mr Sowa, who understood and was sympathetic, but knew that, with German troops only a few doors away it would be impossible to keep him hidden for long. He told Tom he could stay for the night, and then sent his son, Bronislaw, to get help from Walenty Kida,12 commander of the local partisan unit. Arriving breathless at Kida’s house, Bronislaw banged on the window to raise him: “There’s an Englishman at father’s house talking in German and he says he wants to be taken to the Partisans” he said. Kida returned to the house with Bronislaw and interviewed Tom, after which he decided to inform his superior, Zenon Wolcz13, and then transfer the pilot to their hideout in the woods, a dugout managed by gamekeeper soldier Feliks Sitarz.

  The soldiers of the Tarnogora German Barracks had, it transpired, been drinking heavily during the evening of the 23rd, and not only were they unaware of a British RAF pilot having crawled through their hedge just after midnight, but they appeared to turn a blind eye to the activity as Kida and Sowa went from house to house in the early hours, rounding up people to help smuggle the British pilot to the safety of the forest. Once assembled, they split into three groups and made for a familiar patch of woodland where, the previous year, they had excavated an underground bunker for the storage of ammunition and to be a staging post for escaped prisoners waiting to cross the River San. It was very dark and still drizzling and Tom, unable to keep up, was carried most of the way to the woods, where a system of signs and passwords got them past the sentries and to the camouflaged dugout beneath the forest floor. One of the men went down into the bunker and beckoned for Tom to follow, but he hesitated for a moment, unsure what they were going to do with him. Finally, after an exchange of hand signals and reassuring nods, he descended into the dugout and the partisans tried to explain, by way of hand signals and words in German and Polish, that they would be back later and that he should sleep. Leaving him with a guard and a single, lit candle, they withdrew, anxious to locate the crashed aircraft while they still had the cover of darkness. As they left, they pulled the wooden lid over the bunker to conceal its whereabouts and to prevent Tom from climbing back out.

  What a difference a few hours can make. He should have been landing in Italy with the other crews around now and yet here he was, alone, and hunched against the damp walls of a dugout for what was perhaps the loneliest night of his life. A thick fog developed in the early hours and Bronislaw Kaminski, who had been unable to sleep after getting home, was still awake when his mother got up to tend the cows. At first light, Leon Szuba called by the house with orders from Kida; Kaminski was to collect some food and take it to the forest where he would find an Englishman hiding in the bunker. The crash site itself had been alive with activity overnight as villagers and partisans tried to salvage useful material from the aircraft, which had plunged into a field between Tarnogora and the hamlet of Poreba, scattering wreckage across 200 metres. A Browning machine-gun and ammunition were retrieved by Tarnogora partisans, and another gun was taken away by villagers from nearby Sarzyna. Local farmer Sebastian Lyko found a revolver, a parachute and an airman’s helmet,14 which he took home to hide. Other useful parts, including a propeller and a wing section, were quickly taken away and hidden by villagers before first light, when the Gestapo arrived and began shooting to disperse them. It could have brought retribution on the village but the soldiers, who had been too drunk to take control of the situation overnight, were forced to cover for them, and so no immediate reprisals were taken. After inspecting the wreckage, the Germans realized that this had been a supply plane and, although they found bundles of leaflets scattered amongst the wreckage, they found no bodies. The aircrew must be in hiding close by. A massive manhunt was set in motion, with reinforcements placed at checkpoints on the Krzeszow Bridge, the main crossing point over the river San, and on transport links further upriver at Bieliny and Ulanow. There was a lot of traffic in Tarnogora village that morning as Kaminski cycled to the forest with his parcel of food, and he noticed that the Germans, on foot and in cars, seemed very angry.

  Bronislaw Smola, who was involved in the rescue of the airmen

  He found the English pilot lying in the bunker, one bare foot sticking out from the piece of cloth that covered him. Kaminski climbed down with the food and Tom raised his head and spoke to him in German. He said he wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat, so Kaminski ate some of the food himself; perhaps to show that it was safe, and eventually Tom was persuaded to eat a couple of the eggs that the young man’s mother had cooked for him. By way of a thank you, he offered Kaminski a dry biscuit from his escape rations and then pulled a silk map out of his pocket and asked where he was. Kaminski was not sure whether he should tell him, so pretended not to understand the map. At this point, Kida, Sudol, Kusy and Smola, BCh Partisans from the village of Tarnogora, returned to the bunker, bringing with them some tins, which they believed contained meat. Tom took one look at the tins, which he recognized as having come from his aircraft, and said: “Herr, es ist wasser”.15 The men did not believe it until one of them pierced a tin with the tip of a bayonet and discovered that it was indeed water. Tom once again took the map out of his pocket and asked where he was, and Kida finally gave the men permission to tell him. Kusy produced a red marker from his pocket and together the men looked at the map and marked an area close to the San River and said: “This is where you are”. Tom put his hands on his head and his eyes filled up with tears. He took some money out of his pocket and tried to give it to Kaminski, who said: “No, you are far from home and you can buy something to eat with it”. Tom’s thoughts quickly turned to his crew; had they survived the descent and if so, where were they? Kida told him that German troops were out in force looking for them, but that his partisan unit had also sent out scouts and hoped to find them first. Some of the villages were in UPA16 hands, which posed a danger for the downed airmen, and the old chemical works site in Sarzyna, which was now a German depot and surrounded by a high fence, posed another. The partisans were agreed that there would be no escape if they had come down inside that particular complex.

  Kaminski had barely got home when Kida called by and asked him to return to the bunker and assist two people from the Kopki area, who were on their way to the bunker to talk to the English airman. Kaminski took Wiktor Galdys with him and they made their way back to the forest to guard the approach track and wait for the visitors. Kida had warned Kaminski to be on guard against Germans in disguise, and so when he saw a man and a woman walking towards him he shouted: “Hands up!” and approached them cautiously. The woman replied: “They’ve sent me here because of the Englishman in the bunker. I can speak English and I’m supposed to talk to him.” Kaminski went to the bunker and brought Tom out to speak to them; a conversation in English that lasted about ten minutes
. This, I believe, was Commander Zenon Wolcz, who had come to explain to him that it was not safe to remain in the bunker and, as soon as it could be arranged, they would get him to the other side of the River San. Kaminski could not understand any of the conversation but noticed that Tom had tears in his eyes when the female interpreter spoke to him in English.

  Engineer Charlie Keen was having an equally difficult time. His parachute descent had ended on a soft bank, which broke his fall but bounced him into a dyke, from which he emerged with a twisted ankle and no boots. This handicapped him from the start, but nevertheless, he set off down a forest track in his socks, mulling over possible escape options and coming to the conclusion that he could try to reach Tito’s fighters in Yugoslavia. As he passed through a village, dark and quiet, his footfall prompted an outburst of dog barking, so he crept around the next one before arriving at a cluster of houses in the wood. He knocked on a window and frightened a young boy and his mother, who gestured to him to go away, so he kept on the move. At daybreak he met three German soldiers who were chatting to each other as they walked along on their way to breakfast, knife, fork and spoon in hand, and although his first instinct was to make a run for it, he decided to bluff it out and walked directly towards them in his khaki battledress and white roll-neck sweater. Remarkably, one of the soldiers stood aside to let him pass on the narrow track, and they continued on their way to breakfast, chatting and laughing. Charlie tried to get help at another cottage but nobody could understand him, though they did manage to warn him that the Germans were very close by – a fact that was becoming clear.