‘Acting’ until I had held my new post for 21 days and was invalid once I had gone missing, a rule of which I was then ignorant. As the ground got nearer, events seemed to happen with increasing speed. I was descending towards some small terraced houses with gardens or yards at the rear in which a few figures could be seen with their faces upturned in my direction. Landing with a wartime parachute was equivalent to jumping off a ten-foot wall, so I got ready to bend my knees and cushion the impact. Just above roof-top height there was a ‘Phew! Phew!’ as two shots from some weapon or the other whistled passed my ears. I was being shot at, and whether it was bad shooting or just a warning I neither knew nor cared. I touched down in one of those back gardens to find myself seized by two uniformed gentlemen I later knew to be policemen. But I was alive. I had survived.


* * * * * T


he two policemen were far from young. They grabbed me as I released my parachute harness.


‘Pistole?’ they asked as I put my hands quickly above my head. They themselves were armed with revolvers and I was taking no chances with the very men who might have been trying to hit me at rooftop height. I was not carrying my revolver. We were obviously in the rear garden of a small terraced house in an industrial district – rather like being at the back of Attercliffe Road in Sheffield – and I was frogmarched into the street in front and prodded along it with my hands still on my head.


It was an amazing sight. We had obviously won the War. Half the houses on either side of the street had been demolished by bombing. The whole area was a shambles and, if the rest of Germany was like this, they could give up today. The only signs of life came from a group of old men and one or two children, with whom it appeared I was not exactly popular. Some of the men had sticks with which they attempted to have a go at me but my police guards were rougher with their compatriots than they were with their prisoner and those who came too near were sent sprawling in the gutter, for which I was extremely grateful. I was rather relieved when, near the end of the street, we got inside what must have been the police station.


There were no formalities at this point and I was asked no questions, for I imagine their English there was as non-existent as my German. I was wearing my battledress, my badges of rank and my wings. They had no need to ask the purpose of my visit. They knew what I was, and having seen what I had already seen, I did not expect them to be particularly fond of me. After a very short interval they bundled me into a car and I was driven off with a guard down the street, a short drive through a district as ruined as the first one I had seen, until


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