CHIVALROUS ACT
ITALIAN AIRMEN RESCUED AT SEA AFTER BEING SHOT DOWN. GRATITUDE TO CAPTORS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, November 17. Even in modern war with all its horrors, chivalry is not yet dead. Perhaps it is most evident among the British “knights of the air” and the following story may be taken as a typical illustration. An Italian flying-boat was shot down in recent operations and as the aircraft struck the water two members of the crew were unable to extricate themselves and were drowned. The other three, a naval sub-lieutenant, a sergeant-major, and a wireless operator, managed to scramble into the collapsible dinghy. Their chance of survival was exceedingly remote, as the dinghy quickly developed a leak. A Sunderland flying-boat on patrol spotted the tiny boat and as it was so far from land decided to investigate. Though there was a nasty swell at the time, the Sunderland alighted on the sea, but its efforts to get alongside the dinghy were unsuccessful. Eventually a rope was thrown to the Italians and one by one they were hauled on board the flying-boat. This incident could not be allowed to interfere with the normal reconnaissance of the aircraft, which was then carried out, but the British crew saw that their prisoners were provided with hot food and dry clothes. Later on, when the Sunderland finished its patrol, the prisoners were landed and expressed gratitude for the chivalrous manner in which they had been treated. The officer said he had often been told that the British treated their prisoners well. “Now we have seen for ourselves that this is perfectly true,” he said. “We thought that our end had come. It was all so sudden. The British machine-gun fire was overwhelming.”
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1940, Page 4
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289CHIVALROUS ACT Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1940, Page 4
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