RIDE ON BALLOON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 June 1941, Page 6

RIDE ON BALLOON

VIVID STORY OF “FLIGHT.” LATE FOR THE PICTURES. The first thought of Gunner Griffiths as with clawing hands, teeth and feet he clung to the swinging, slippery rope of a barrage balloon 2,000 ft. above a western town, was: 'This will make me late for the pictures.” Griffiths, describing to the “Daily Express” how he with nine other men were releasing the balloon’s moorings and were about to get "clear when a rope caught around his leg, said: “The balloon was drifting towards a wall, and rather than be dashed against it, I clung on. Suddenly the balloon swung straight up and I saw fields dropping away below me. I felt sure the winch driver, although he was some distance away from the balloon, would see me, but I heard afterwards that he thought I was a piece of bush that had caught on the rope. “Up and up I went until at about 2,000 ft. the balloon remained stationary and the rope I was clinging to began to swing about 40ft. on either side. My I foot freed itself and I felt my hands, which were already frozen and numb, slipping on the greasy rope. That was the worst moment of all. I thought death was certain, but after slipping about Bft. I managed to check my fall by gripping the rope with my teeth. “I know I could not hang for long like that, and my slipping down had shaken me up, so I tried to hook the free end of the rope with one of my | feet. I did it. though the swinging made me very sick, and I had enough savvy to wind some slack around the other leg. “I had heard how people near death saw their past life roll before their eyes. I did not believe it, but now I know it is true, for incidents in my childhood flashed through my mind.

“Years afterwards —it was 15 minutes by the clock —I felt the balloon moving' downwards. When I arrived there was an ambulance and my pals waiting for me. My muscles were aching, my mouth bleeding' and my leg cut, but it was nothing serious.” When the sergeant-major wanted to put Griffiths in an ambulance, he remarked: “I'd rather not. sir. I’ve got a date at the pictures and I'm late already.”