REMARKABLE EXPLOIT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 156, 1 June 1940, Page 7

REMARKABLE EXPLOIT.

WITH ENEMY WEAPON. (British Official Wireless.) Received June 1, 11.30 a.m. / RUGBY, May 31. The following story was related by an eye-witness who has returned from France: — “On May 11—the sfecond day of the invasion of Belgium—we continued our retreat with the remnants of the Belgian Division, which had had very heavy fighting the previous day. We had been bombarded and machinegunned from the air continuously from dawn, as many as thirty or forty ’planes being over us at a time. “In the evening we were being bombed by sixteen Dorniers when suddenly four Spitfires appeared. They engaged the enemy, and within six minutes brought down four Dorniers. The others dispersed. One of the Dorniers, fell within a few yards of our column and the pilot and crew were burnt before we could reach them. “One of the machine-guns was intact, and my sergeant dismounted it and took about 700 rounds of ammunition in drums from the ’plane. We continued our journey and eventually camped in a wood for the night, where one of the fitters mounted the German machine-gun on a side-car. “Two days afterwards we were bombed at dawn by a Heinkel. We had with us a trooper who is a Bisley shot. Using the German machine-gun, he brought it down. When we went over to the wrecked ’plane, which had fallen about a mile off, we got another machine-gun from it, but this was damaged. But, what was even more precious, we got another 700 rounds of ammunition, which could be used, we hoped, in a subsequent encounter. “When we were about to embark, the enemy had been bombing the quayside, trving to get our small boat all day. Just at dusk the last German ’plane brought, down one of our fighters. The British pilot parachuted and was actually in the air coming down when the German ’plane circled down low over the sheds -where we were sheltering. We got in a burst of machinegun fire and brought him down as well. The German plane crashed, the piiot in the parachute coming down about the same time. We sent out a motor-cycle to pick up the British pilot, whom we took on board and brought back to England that night.