DEEDS OF THE R.A.F.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1941, Page 5

DEEDS OF THE R.A.F.

AGAINST HOPELESS ODDS STORIES OF INDIVIDUAL ' HEROISM. AGAINST LUFTWAFFE SWARMS. LONDON, May 31. Members of the Royal Air Force returning from Crete give vivid pictures of the overwhelming strength of the Luftwaffe against the small British air force on the island. “It was a mansized job even to get the planes into the air, the Luftwaffe machine-gun-ned our pilots and aerodromes so continually,” said one. "We made many fruitless attempts to get into the cockpits, and then, when we got into the air, we were overwhelmed by enemy lighters, and if we escaped to return to the aerodromes we often found that the runways had been bombed.” One Hurricane pilot was last seen with 20 Messerschmitts on his tail. He had brought down many enemy planes before that, but the odds were 100 great. To maintain our fighters .there would have meant their total destruction. The pilots relate countless individual acts of heroism. One pilot who had never flown a Hurricane before took it up to fight off droves of Messerschmitts. and he helped to bring down five before he lost his life.

NAZI BRUTALITY MALTREATMENT OF WOUNDED SOLDIERS. NEW ZEALANDER’S TESTIMONY. CAIRO. May 31. A New Zealander who was wounded in Crete, in an interview, said: “I was in a tent in a hospital camp on May 20, when 50 planes bombed and machine-gunned us for 90 minutes. Parachutists followed the Stukas, and captured the camp. They ordered us out at the point of tommy-guns, whether we were able to walk or not, and threw hand grenades into the tents to hurry us. "They replaced the Union Jack with the swastika, and ordered the patients to stand with their arms raised in salute for half an hour. Many collapsed. A German officer intervened and ordered the patients to bed, but a superior officer swaggered up, cursing and threatening us with grenades. Another officer took photographs of us. "A New Zealand battalion, 400 yards away, eventually recaptured the hospital. The Germans tried to escape by making 16 wounded march ahead of them. A wounded parachutist who was being treated in the hospital exactly as the British volunteered to be a guard when the Germans captured it, and proved one of the most brutal.”