They Spread Their Wings (29 page)

All that day and the next, enemy armour and infantry were seen massing in the area around Sedan – the sector in which No 150 Squadron operated – and (although figures for RAF losses on 14 May vary among historians) the situation was, in the words of aviation historian W.R. Chorley, ‘beyond retrieval’:

[14 May 1940] was a day calling for raw courage and those who flew into the cauldron at Sedan displayed a determination that won the respect of friend and foe alike. In the wake of what had happened in the fighting so far, no one now expected the Battles and Blenheims to turn the tide, but it would not be for want of trying.

The main weight of the Allied air attack [seventy-one bomber sorties] was pitched during the mid-afternoon and probably within the space of one hour, thirty-one Battles were shot down and the Blenheim squadrons were equally hard hit. By the end of that day at least forty-seven bombers were written off [and sixteen fighters were also lost]. Not surprisingly, a good percentage of the aircrew shot down were either killed or taken prisoner, but during the next few days, survivors of this desperate action arrived back with their units by various means and with miraculous tales to tell.

For No 150 Squadron, the 14th began at 04.00 when a half-section (two aircraft) was put on thirty minutes’ readiness and the remainder at three hours’ notice. Then at 05.45 a telephone message was received from Gp Capt Field at HQ requesting two half-sections to stand by for immediate take-off. ‘B’ Flight was alerted accordingly. At 06.30 Wing HQ rang through the target information: pontoon bridges over the Meuse, 1½ miles south of Sedan. At 07.35 the first pair took off: Plt Off Gulley and crew in L5524, and Plt Off Peacock-Edwards and crew in P2179. They encountered considerable light flak around Sedan and, despite taking hits, dive-bombed the pontoons from 4,000ft at 07.50 hours – the enemy was less than fifteen minutes away. Several explosions were seen but they did not hang about to assess the damage and landed back at 08.35. The second pair were airborne five minutes after the first. Sgt Beale in L5457 and Plt Off Long in K9483 attacked pontoon bridges west of Douzy but they, too, had to fly through an intense hail of flak, saw their bombs detonate on the target but could not assess the damage done. They landed back at 08.37.

Waiting around on the airfield must have been nerve-racking but Alan Summerson’s time for action came when a second operation was ordered for the afternoon. On that fateful day he was the gunner in Fairey Battle P5232, one of four aircraft – again operating in two pairs – detailed for another low-level attack on the bridges near Sedan. Take-off was at 15.18 and 15.24. Alan’s aircraft was first away and the other members of his crew were his usual pilot and observer, Flt Sgt George Barker and Sgt James Williams. The other aircraft in his section was that flown by Plt Off Posselt and the crews of the three were:

K9483     Plt Off Arthur Posselt; Sgt Donald Bowen; AC2 Norman Vano (18)

L4946     Fg Off John Ing; Sgt John Turner; AC1 William Nolan

P2182     Plt Off John Boon; Sgt Thomas Fortune; AC1 Sydney Martin

Not one of these four aircraft returned.

There was no time for recriminations or investigation. The German tide could not be held back and the next morning at 08.00, with the not-so-distant explosions ringing in their ears, those who remained at Écury-sur-Coole airfield were destroying any u/s aircraft and equipment while frantically packing lorries and trailers with stores and provisions for a rapid evacuation to Pouan airfield, No 150’s new base about 30 miles south. The convoy drove off at 09.30 and the nine serviceable Fairey Battles remaining flew over it en route to Pouan.

Alan Summerson’s pilot and observer were killed and he was the sole survivor among the crews of the four aircraft despatched. Although German light flak was deadly, he said later that his own Fairey Battle was brought down by gunfire from Bf 109 fighters. Due to its low altitude, the angle at which it crashed was fortunately quite shallow and it slithered along the ground before bursting into flames behind German lines, which were by now forming a huge salient to the west of the Meuse in front of Sedan.

This was the day that JG 53 wreaked havoc far and wide over the Sedan front. The whole Jagdgeschwader was committed and all those pilots who had crossed swords with No 150 Squadron back in September 1939 played a part in the carnage it suffered this day. In the heat of a battle on this sort of scale it is impossible to match losses accurately with claims, and this battle was particularly ferocious. JG 53 believed that – among forty-five claims made for all types (including eighteen French) – in the space of thirty-five minutes between 16.20 and 16.55, they shot down fourteen Fairey Battles near Sedan. Among the Luftwaffe claimants were Rolf Pingel, Franz Kaiser and Ignaz Prestele. It will be noted later that Alan said he had shot down two German fighters. Verifying that claim is impossible now, although it has to be said that there are two or three German losses on that date not fully accounted for. Interestingly, one of these relates to the renowned ace Werner Molders of JG 53, who is reported to have been shot down during the aerial melee around Sedan on 14 May. He was uninjured and back in action the next day. Who knows, maybe Alan bagged himself a ‘big fish’?

LAC Summerson not only escaped from this crash but also survived the war and remained in the RAF until shortly before his death in 1976. During his lifetime he spoke very little, even to his family, about his horrific experiences in France in 1940, but with the help of his logbook and reminiscences in the graphic autobiography of Flt Lt William Simpson DFC, another brave airman from that ill-fated campaign, Alan’s story emerged into the light.

Bill Simpson and Alan Summerson lay in adjacent beds for many months in a number of French hospitals, both suffering from severe burns sustained in their respective aeroplane crashes that left them in a very poor state of health. Indeed, it was said that when the Germans became aware of their existence they did not bother about the two men or consider placing them in a POW hospital, because they felt both would not survive their injuries. In retrospect a POW hospital might have resulted in better medical treatment and possibly repatriation on medical grounds.

Bill Simpson, a pilot with No 12 Squadron who had been shot down on 10 May, was terribly burned and recalled in his memoirs,
One of Our Pilots is Safe
(Hamish Hamilton, 1942):

One day, while I was in a hospital in Bar-le-Duc [30 miles south of Verdun and ahead of the advancing Germans], the CO of 150 Squadron came in. He was paying a visit to one of his air gunners, LAC Summerson, who had his face, back, both hands and arms badly burned and a gunshot wound in one leg. I saw Alan Summerson for the first time as we lay on stretchers in the ward, waiting to be taken by ambulance to the railway station. His dark hair was unkempt, his face black and red in patches – scab and mercurochrome – and his lower eyelids and his bottom lip were drawn down.

The squadron commander told Alan that things were getting ‘dicey’ and he had to move his squadron to a new airfield further south and would not be able to visit him again. When the hospital staff also told the two wounded airmen that they were to be ‘evacuated’ they realised there must be a large-scale retreat going on. Bill Simpson recalled they were put on to a hospital train and did not see each other again until they reached the Hôpital Militarie Carnot in Chalons-sur-Saône (60 miles north of Lyon). There they were taken on stretchers into a small room and were so weak that the doctors gave them an injection to stimulate the action of their hearts and put them both on plasma drips. Most of the time they lay still, too worn out to talk, and it was only at night, when sleep would not come, that they chatted at length. Alan described his home in Lincolnshire, and told Bill about swimming in the summer and skating on the Fens in winter; of rough shooting and hay-making, and particularly about his interest in ornithology.

Despite the hospital being full to overflowing and the severe shortage of many medical supplies, both Englishmen were fussed over by their nurse, Madame Gentille, who made sure they were well fed. There were also many visits from local people, including children, to whom the English airmen were something of a novelty. They brought gifts of fruit and flowers, and chatted to the men, completely ignoring the horrific nature and smell of their burns.

Dressings on their injuries were changed every three days but the doctor’s methods in this process were somewhat crude and exceedingly painful. Bill Simpson said Alan’s hands were particularly bad and waiting for his own turn, he could see that the pain from changing the dressings made Alan drip with sweat all over his body. His fingers were a mess of scarlet and because the bandages were not soaked off, blood ran freely from them all over the rubber sheet on the bed.

During those long days in hospital, with scraps of news bringing only tales of more retreat and the Germans about to enter Paris, Bill Simpson was able to draw out more of Alan’s story.

Alan told him he was the gunner in one of four Fairey Battles carrying out a raid against a concentration of German troops halted in a valley near Sedan. While they were in the middle of their bombing run they were attacked by a swarm of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters. The pilots carried on with the bombing run while Alan and the three other gunners in the formation dealt with the fighters. The 109s came in very close, for they knew that the Battles were easy meat – slow and ill-defended in the rear. Alan was hit in the leg and the observer sitting between him and the pilot was killed, but Alan claimed to have shot down two Messerschmitts, which he said crashed in flames. His aircraft suddenly struck the ground behind the German lines and he was thrown out some distance clear of the aircraft. When he got up he found that, apart from the wound in his right leg, he was not badly hurt. Stumbling back to the Battle, which was now in flames, his one idea was to save the pilot trapped in the cockpit. Climbing on to the wing and standing in the middle of the flames, he dragged out the pilot, but Flt Sgt Barker was already dead and now he himself was severely burned. Determined not to fall into the hands of the Germans, Alan headed for some woods not far away. His leg was bleeding profusely and skin hung in loose shreds from his face and hands, but he reached the wood and lay in hiding until nightfall.

For two more days and nights Alan was on the run in territory already largely held by the enemy and he saw several German armoured car and tank units. He hid in houses and cafes that had been deserted by their owners in the face of the advancing army. Once, while he was upstairs in a bedroom, he heard German soldiers talking in the cafe below. He stumbled out of bed and hid beneath it for hours while, in the room below, German soldiers made merry with the cafe’s stock of wine. Luckily the Germans never went upstairs or they could not have failed to see him. Eventually, however, they rolled out into the night and left him undisturbed.

All the time he was in great pain from the burns to his face, hands and back, and from his wounded leg. For food he managed to find in the houses bits of cereal and stale bread, which he soaked in wine to make it soft enough for his damaged lips. He was nearly blind, too, but in spite of his injuries Alan managed to walk almost 25 miles – fortunately in the right direction – and on the third night he stumbled across a French patrol. Challenged by a sentry whom he could barely see, he answered in French that he was an English airman. He was told to advance with his hands above his head, but this was awkward for him because, having lost his belt and with his braces broken, he could only support his trousers by pressing his arms to his sides. So, when he walked towards the astonished sentry, his trousers fell down around his ankles! The soldiers helped him to their patrol post where they laid him on a pile of coats and gave him brandy. It was only then that he became aware of his exhaustion and the greatness of his pain and he was eventually taken by ambulance to the hospital near Verdun.

LAC Summerson was hospitalised, albeit on the ‘right’ side of the lines now, but in what would shortly become an occupied country. Word came through that the Germans were in Rouen and next morning, with a quick change of bandages, the nursing staff dressed Alan and Bill in rough shirts and carried them outside on stretchers. They were on the move again. After a long wait at the local station, where Red Cross nurses satisfied their now ravenous appetites with ham rolls and coffee, what passed for a ‘hospital train’ drew in and they were loaded inside bare cattle trucks. Crammed to capacity with stretchers, baggage, nurses and wounded French soldiers lying, squatting or sitting in every vacant space, in the glorious sunshine their truck soon became hot and fetid. Even with the truck door open, flies plagued their skin and bandages but they had to just lay there, unable to move their limbs to swat the pests. As the train passed slowly through many stations they glimpsed hordes of people both on the move or in huge crowds just standing around.

It was pitch dark when the train reached Paray-le-Monial. For reasons not explained, doctors on the train decided that Alan and Bill should be taken off at this point while the train continued its journey south. The two men were left on their stretchers side by side on the platform as the train set off again. An ambulance crew came and drove them to another hospital near the town where the medical staff took one look at them and promptly put them on drips and fed them milk – they had had no food since the ham rolls nearly twenty-four hours earlier and were completely exhausted by the rough ride since. The Englishmen found this new hospital, run by Catholic nuns, a haven of peace, compassion and tranquillity, and here their soiled dressings were carefully soaked off and replaced with hardly any pain, with two doctors and three nurses taking two and a half hours to carry out this task on both men.

The haven was short-lived, though. A nearby bombing raid caused pandemonium and after just twelve hours the nuns put Alan and Bill back on to stretchers and packed them off to the station. Apparently it was a civilian hospital and all beds were needed for casualties from the air raid. A proper hospital train awaited them at the station but they were put on board into conditions made chaotic by bomb-blast damage from several near-misses during the air raid. But the up side was that at least they were fed on board, and at one of the stations en route they were given cakes, fruit and wine by a group of well-dressed French women.