LEAP FOR LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 23376, 20 September 1939, Page 11

LEAP FOR LIFE

CADET BEHAVES LIKE VETERAN COLLISION 1H THE SKY As a holder of a senior Officers’ Training Corps certificate, Dennis Nalimn, a 17-year-old English lad, went with a squad of other _ boys from Oundle to spend a week in camp with the Royal Air Force at 'Wittering, Northamptonshire. It is part of their training to become “ air-minded. On the Thursday a _ number of the boys were taken up in Blenheim bombers. In each bomber there was one pilot and ono boy. Each pilot wore his ordinary service pa racial te, but the boys, having a different variety of parachute, wore only the parachute harness. The parachutes themselves lay on ledges behind (heir seats. The squadron went off in formation. The machines rose to 3,000 ft, threading in and out of the clouds, always in formation. Dennis Nahum’s pilot was 25-year-old Sergeant Jack Bullard. Side by side with them was the piano of Pilotofficer Williams, leader 1 of the flight. Beside him also sat an Oundle boy. DUG IN RIBS. Suddenly out of a bank of cloud they came, and something was wrong with Bullard’s position in the formation. The boy sitting with Pilot-officer Williams dug him in the ribs. The officer looked round. There close beside him he saw the other aeroplane. He swooped to clear, but it was hopeless. His whirring propeller sliced clean through the tail of Sergeant Bullard’s machine. Out of the clear sky had come almost certain death. Sergeant Bullard’s machine. losing the stabilising effect of its tail, began to plunge and fall like a loaf in a gale. The sergeant and his boy passenger were flung from side to side, and from floor to the roof of the enclosed codepit, stunned almost into unconsciousness. With their faces cut and their bodies bruised they held the sides of the cockpit to steady themselves. Remember that all this time the shattered plane was dropping swiftly to earth.. Three thousand feet is not very high up. The end was a matter of seconds. Dennis Nahum, stunned as he was by the buffeting, saw the pilot pull back the roof of the cockpit, and realised that it was a jump for life, _ He calmly turned round for his parachute and began to clip it on. As he stood there trying to keep his feet for just an instant the pilot gave him a push and out he went, to life or death, as Fate decided. “I cannot remember going out,” be says now, “ but as I fell a sudden severe shock woke me up thoroughly.” It was, the parachute opening and breaking his fall. MIND CLEAR, Dennis still cannot remember leaving the plane, but as soon as he fell through the air his mind was clear enough, and his nerve so controlled that he remembered to ipull the ripcord of the parachute at the right moment. As the speed of his fail eased, Dennis realised that in the hurry he had only clipped on one side of his parachute. This meant that he must touch the •ground sideways instead of feet first. His mind was cool and clear enough to realise that as he fell whirling and jolting. He saw some high-tension wires. He realised what they were, but, passing them by the narrowest margin, hit the ground heavily and fainted. Meanwhile the leader of the flight. Pilot-officer Williams, had swooped to earth. He raced two miles from the airfield to the spot where Dennis had landed. Jus.t ns he reached there Dennis was recovering from his faint. “ And then I saw a thing I’ll always remember,” said the pilot. “As I came up, the boy got to his feet, stood at attention, and smartly saluted me.” And what of the sergeant whoso swiftness, allied with , the boy’s coolness, resulted in so miraculous an escape ? He died. Ho came down near the place where the boy landed, but fell like a stone and was killed instantly. When they examined his parachute it had a great tear in it. The propeller had ripped it as he jumped. Dennis Nahum becomes the first English schoolboy to qualify for the Gold Caterpillar, the badge of tiie Caterpillar Club, open only to those who have saved their lives from a crashing aircraft by a parachute jump. You might think that this ends his desire to fly. Ear from it. He is already pleading with his father to let him return to camp.