Last of the Few by Max Arthur

Author:Max Arthur [Arthur, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753534625
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Flying Officer Barton ‘Barry’ Sutton

56 SQUADRON

On 12 August my section was led by a man called Jumbo Gracey – a most positive, cavalier character. He did not give a damn what he said. He was a dreadful pilot, but he was extremely brave. He was annoying – he had a horrible raucous laugh – he was an ugly fat chap, full of fun, full of life. To sum him up, he was the sort of character you would need to weld people together when things were going badly and that’s exactly what Jumbo Gracey did. Unfortunately, Page and I got the fag end of his rather bad leadership – Page getting the worse of the deal.

I first landed at Manston with blanco in my face and I really didn’t see the runway, which was just taped out by an army officer, who, when I landed, said, ‘Did you see them?’ to which I said, ‘Why the hell do you think I’m here?’ – but he meant did I see the line of flags. In fact I hadn’t seen them, and had landed purely by chance down the only serviceable bit of runway which he had mapped out.

I was flying number three, which was on the left, and Page was either number two or in the centre. I can’t remember – but I saw him blow up and catch alight and go down, but I never saw him get out. In fact, I was quite certain he wouldn’t get out. It looked to me as if the whole thing was too final. The reason why he was shot down and I was shot up was, I think, that we had insufficient overtaking speed due to old Jumbo’s rotten leadership. We were only flying Hurricanes, and you need height – if you haven’t got height you need a lot of overtaking speed to get in a quick attack from the rear quarter, and we sort of lumbered up from line astern and just ran across a tremendous lot of cross-fire.

I remember seeing Taffy Higginson coming over from the right to shoot clean across us to the left – from then on I was just concerned with getting down because I knew I had been hit. I had been hit in the radiator and poor old Geoffrey was concerned with getting himself out of his aeroplane – which he managed to do, and it was as well for him that he landed in the sea, as the salt water, painful though it was, undoubtedly had a cooling effect on his very extensive burns.

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