AIR RAID ESCAPE

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1940, Page 6

AIR RAID ESCAPE

Official Correspondent with N.Z.E.F.

new zealand troops three slightly hurt nazi pilot captured

England, Sept. 27. The second echelon's first casualties in .enemy action were suffered to-day when an aerial bomb burst 15 feet ahead of a full bus containing members of the Auckland Battalion. The bus was overturned and two men were slightly wounded, one in the face and one in the thigh. The bus was neturning from a swimming parade. The bomb was one of sevepl dropped in a. south-eastern town when a formation of 16 enemy planes, heading towards London, was broken up by anti-aircraft guns and British fighters. Two raiders suffered severely at the hand of British fighters. One German pilot who landed his machine intact though himself badly wounded was captured and rushed to hospital by members of the Wellington Battalion. During the same fight a rnember of the composite battalion formed from reinforcements with the second echelon was severely but not dangerously wounded in the face by a fragment of an anti-air-craft sheli which did not burst until it struck the ground. .Three New Zealanders, a major, a sergeant and a private, who were close at hand when another bomb burst and entombed a number of civilians earned high praise from civilians for their instant and energetic rescue work.