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THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 18, 1941.
ACES TOAST THE CRYPT MAN WHO SONGS MADE THEM ACES GO ON
(By A Special Correspondent)
"THE TOAST IS-The station'!" · We are standing in No. 1 ante-room of the officers' mess at the first R.A.F. station to notch 600 'planes against the enemy-one-fifth of the total shot down round Britain since the war started.
The three squadron commanders, each wearing the ribbon of the D.F.C., raise their glasses, and some one says: "Coupled with the name of the Station Commander. He's leaving us this afternoon.”
"Here's to you, sir.” The Birth in our group tall, aquiline-featured. and wearing ribbons of the last war shuffles with his long, spindly legs, and points his glass at the three young- er men before him
"A Great Bunch"
"Worst squadron I ever knew,' he jerks out.
always find 'Mungo,' and we us- ually get together."
Stephen and "Mungo" Park believe in scrapping in twos one comes in if a Hun gets on the tail of the other.
They are quiet speaking, mat- ter-of-fact young men, and when I mention "ace" they say there are no heroes in these parts.
boss Then 1 meet the
of the squadron, a thirty-year-old South "Couldn't get them into the air. African squadron leader, described Lazy lot of devils."
to nie as "a cold, calculating
And in the same breath he says quietly to me: "Never had a greater bunch of fellows. How these chapa chase Jerry!"
As St. Martin's Is Hit By Bomb
Six
were
-
-
hundred people singing "Annie Laurie" in the crypt of St. Martin in the Fields when a bomb fell and damaged what is Lon- don's most famous church in a recent raid.
The whole place shook.
Clouds
of dust filled the crypt, but there was no panic.
After barely three seconds' pause the pianist continued play- ing and the song went on with perhaps a shade more volume.
A prayer of thankfulness for their escape was said, and soon afterwards everyone was asleep.
The bomb tore a hole in the pavement, crashing church. through the railings on the south
I blew in side.
or damaged all the windows on that side, pitted the church wall, and wrecked an office next to the crypt. No one was hurt, but a woman at a bus This man has shot down nine-stop outside was killed, teen planes (plus as well), and his squadron has got 120. He has
killer."
1 watch this lean, broad- the same look as "Mungo" Park shouldered group caplam take and Stephen--eyes that are cold leave of the rest of his men like) and clear and far-seeing. the father of a boy who scores # They seem to assess and weigh century on Founder's Day. prideļup everything they hit on, adding to his embarrassment.
He sits on the bed and offers me
good-looking in a tough
He covers it by rating them. the last cup of coffee. The cup is brusquely, good-naturedly. Yet thick and cheap and the coffee is every man in the room reads in poured from a battered enamel his sharp, tired eyes tired by jug. But it is good coffee. watching the skies for his boys! He is to come back--a look of unwilling-| way, and his thick woollen polo jumper adds to the thickness of his chest
"It's He says
devil about Seems the these night bombers. only way Jerry can get at us now.
ness to go.
An hour later I was to see his final take-off. Six tough-Fiibed tighter pilots had him shoulder high and marched through the mess Two were in danger of los- mg the hair from their scalps,
a
So went the man who dug great barbed thorn into Hitler'a side, who helped the crack figh- ter squadrons to bring down 600 'planee and make history in World No. 2.
For a job like that, had he been A naval man, his name would rank with the Harwoods and the Raleighs; or, in the army, with the Moores and the Allenbys.
But the group captain leaves his beloved station as he came. To the public he will be known as the anonymous R.A.F. officer who commanded the "500 Station."
I stroll across to the squadron which got the 600th enemy 'plane. It is quartered in * mud-sur- rounded wooden hut, and the pilots are wearing their flying kit ready for the "scramble."
The Rusty Stove
There are two lines of blanket-' ́rovcred beds, and a rusty chimney stove stands in the middle of the room like a homely sentry.
Two of the boys an Englishman and a six-foot Pole--are playing cards. The game is cravat, which looks like a double game of pati-
ence.
Two New Zealanders are lying on beds. Their hulf-closed eyes squint at me, and close again.
શ
"There's an answer to every-
thing in warfare, There will be an answer to this, But it's tough for the people. Wich we could do something about it."
I find it strange that a man who is waiting from dawn to Jusk to go
up and kill or be killed should think oľ other problems.
But he and his boys have grown to look upon their job of streak- ing across the sky in Spitfires al- most as an ordinary man thinks of digging his garden.
I ask him how It feels at the my ment he is abott to make h's kill. He says: "We don't have much time to think. A serap last, at the outside, two minutes.
"When you are up there you are in another world.
"You see England and bits of France stretching down below. You hear a roar and you know rome one's gone down, or there are fireworks about.
"Knocking down the Hun is a foxy business. You've got to use your cloud and your sun, and make it a real job of work. You've got to let 'em go sometimes, and get 'em the next day.
Hums Run Home
"The Hun won't always face a fight. He swoops down from a height, gives you a burst, and puts his nose down hard for home.
"He goes for the stragglers. won't join in a dog-fight.
Door Pushed in
The stained-glass figure of Christ in the great window above the altar was decapitated, and daylight now shows through the raiment of the praving Apostles. But there was little other damage.
Below ground the door of the crypt verger's room was pushed off its hinges by falling bricks from the wrecked office.
But the records of 10.000 needy been men and women who had given assistance were left intact.
Strong Pillars
The Rev. G. L. Davey, curate- in-charge, said to a reporter: "The stood the shock building has amazingly well. We shall get the expers to see whether the struc- ture his been damaged at all.
"On the face of it, it seems that it has not. Tho massive pillars in the vaults will stand 11 very great deal. A modern building struck in the same WHY would probably have tumbled down."
St. Martin's is 200 years old. It was revealed that the Royal
College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Jun and the Swedish Church at Robeth the have also been dam- aged in recent raids.
Among other buildings bombed are Coventry Cathedral and St. Mary's Hall. Coventry.
Incendiary bombs fell on Bir- mingham Cathedral in a recent raid and the roof was almost stripped by fire. The fire service saved the interior and the main structura. The famous Burne- Jones windows had been removed to safe storage.
A.R.P. MEN ON LOOTING CHARGE
Three A.R.P. workers were at Old Street remanded on bail for a week on a charge of being con- cerned in stealing a box contain- Heing 100 tins of sardines from pre- mises dainaged by war operations. "We reckon that for each sortie They were described as James the label of a twopenny library. we make each man should bring Lockhart (53), of Whiston Road, On the squadron commander's down four 'planes. That's our tar-Shoreditch; William Maurice bed is a black Nazi machine-gun, get. We don't do it, of course, but Amner (40), of Boston Street, Le and beside it is Pete, a spotted it's no use going for only one man Hackney Road; and Albert Victor
An Englishman is reading a book. It is a thriller, and bears
James Steward (31), of Lowther "Nor is it any use firing all your House, Lee Street, E. ammunition at one Jerry.
mongrel dog with more intelli-and then coming home. gence, say the fighter pilots, thun 50,000 Germans.
"In the last five weeks we have pushed them back about thirty miles.. They used to come all over Kent. Now they stop, and are stopped, over the coast. *Their tactics now seem daft to us. Their Me 109's scamper over with a few light bombs and drop 'em anywhere-most times in the
Resting on their beds are Pilot Officer Harbourne Mackay Stop- hen (hle.score is nineteen plus, plus being an enemy 'plane he helped to destroy), and Flight Lieutenant: John Honry Park (eleven plus) - the men who shared the station kitty by get ting that 600th 'planë, Stephen is twenty-six and clean-fields; shaven. He is as spruce as: when he caught the 9,30 train to his City office in the days of peace.
Together At-Dunkirk - Twenty-two-year-old "Mungo Park is taller, and slim. ';
These men are inseparable. They have fought together since the days of Dunkirk.
"Their fighters make their way across flying as high as they can, like lost sheep; We would leave them alone for all the damage they do. But if we did the artful de- vils might try to come down to machine-gum the ground."
Jerry Has Tail Down He says his boys are not nearly Stephen says: "We both lead | so hard-pushed now. flights now, but in a scrap I can "Jerry had his "tail up once,
he says. "Now he's got it well down. We don't think he has a chance of putting it up again." We talk about his boys. He says fighting is all team work
aces now.
It's a good idea, he says, that we don't have ballyhooed All we want is to ground the Jerry, and that can't be done by undivi- dualists.
As we talk the radio gives the for schools, it is a singing tas con, Children chant scales again
background. The programme. Is
and again and again.
Now one troubles to switch it | _off." The boys go on playing cards, or reading, or snoɑzing or waiting for the call.
"Englishmen.live very well to gether. That struck me firat in the R.A.F. The boys sleep hard, eat hard; and fight like blazes."