CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1960.
He's supposed to be in a SAMMY-
ACKY'S DIARY JAK Mendelsohn Private Foom, But There's an other
Yesterday We WENT TO VISIT
my Uncle Sammy Whose In The
HOSPI TAL*
Age 32%
CITY HOSPITAL
90
So They Took a X-RAY found out he Had BUSTED all 2 of his legs. So he is nT aLOUD TO RUN A Round MUCH
HmM
M.DA
00
HOSPITAL IS A Place Where You So To be Sick In somebody else's Bed,
guy in There also
UNCLE
SamMY
Which is too Bad, On A COUNT of with those things on His feet, he'd be a good GOALE ON OUR Hockey TEAM.
ooh.
other BUY
it's on A Count of Last week he was crossing The Street, when Oliver Sudden a car came
BUNKED into him.
¡Bunk!,
©1960 KM FRUTES Savdicate ing World Pigiss Reserved,
ALSO i think he'S NOT ALOUD TO EaT, CAUSE every Body was Sneaking food into HIM.
SheAked in food
TODAY, in this instalment of SCRAMBLE! the story of the Battle of Britain, Captain Hugh Dundas gives a remarkably vivid account of what it actually felt like sitting in the cockpit of a Hurricane or Spitfire twenty years ago. It is also a revealing picture of that extraordinary band of fliers who were probably the last in a major war to fight in person-to-person combat.
'We thought we were pretty good,
and
that we might did not enter our
At the time, of course,
we got the works By Hugh Dundas, D.S.O., D.F.C.
from newspapers, radio and every other medium of publicity.
we
sentimental
be beaten minds...
Daddy says UNCLE SAMMY
Might Half
to stay out of WORK a work LONG TIME, on a count of COMPEN sation has SET IN,
1940
ADD VICE
foR
CHILDREN:
When Your Crossing The Street, BE SURE f wait till an EMPTY Space comes by!
ONE PENNY
TELEPHONE SUCAME 0022
TEN DOWN IN MASS RAIDS Hour-Long Battle
THE GERMANS' LAUNCHED MASS RAIDS ON THE SOUTH-EAST COAST AND ON NORTHEAST ENGLAND TO-DAY. IN FIERCE. BATTLES, AT LEAST TEN ENEMY AIRCRAFT THE WERE REPORTED DOWN-FIVE IN SOUTH-EAST, FOUR IN THE NORTH-EAST AND- ONE SINGLE RAIDER IN SCOTLAND.
per of this fighter boy approach Driving back to the mess with
to the job was tested in the fire. the others, you think about It was a terribly wearing Smith, who was playing snooker CO ordeal. And it is doubtful with you last night. The whether the power of the spirit tells you to get a meal quick--
It is not surprising that some And the brightest spirits of to endure the strain was helped back at readiness in half an and by the extraordinary contrast hour. Wailers in white coats and of this mystique has stuck. all, the most adventurous Occasionally, when people intro- individualistle, the men with the which was a feature of daily bring you the food, hot
üte.
good. duce me to
stranger they quickest wits and the speediest a
You went to sleep at night in You look at the Express, to into make
the reactions, tended to get some reference to
3 comfortable bed, Your see the cricket scores, or at the In fact i remember preening People fell over themselves to Battle of Britain and I wonder Fighter Command.
Such men established the tone Pyjamas had been laid out by a Mirror, to find out whether Jane sheepishly whether I am ex-
well-trained batman, who per- has any clothes ori, And as you myself as 1 walked around Lon- Lay us drinks in pubs and clubs, pected to look different in some in the regular squadrons. And formed all the helpful duties of leave the mess again to go back The fighter boys, "Dowding's dun after leaving hospital, one Someone wrote a
way from other human beings the Auxiliaries and Volunteer
valet. He brought you a cup of to dispersal, you see the ad- Chicks," Churchill's "Few arm in a sling (bright red silk, there was no lack of adulation of course), limping a bit self- song about wearing a pair of steely-eyed and debonair, per- Reservists fitted the pattern, for tea when he called you, half on julant go quietly off to Smith's
they were the people who pre- hour before dawn.
room, to gather up his things, silver wings. The Army rather haps.
Or should I throw a few ferred the excitement ond ex- consciously, childishly hoping
Day after day you watched waiting for us wherever
It is not surprising that after passers-by would take souly called us The Glamour "wizard prangs" inte the con- hilaration of flight to marching the sun come up and smelt the a time some of the galety was went that autunın 20 years ago that
and perhaps munnur Bays. And we did not mind a persalign, or gesticulate with my or driving about in the Terri- clean freshness of an autumn rubbed off the pilots of Fighter And I cannot pretend that it was notice unenjoyable.
"brave boy" under their breath. bit.
day quietly beginning. hands in the manner affected torial Army, by screen fighter pilots showing how they got on the
England were all around you, cnemy's tail and nailed him with a short, sharp burst?,
Now, 20 years later, as we in our characters-hard though amble placidly into our 40s, it it is to define it precisely which is all rather embarrassing. And accounted for the extraordinary when people ask me: "What sort degree of friendliness and ac- of chaps were the fighter pilots cord which prevailed in of 1940? What were they like?" squadrons, I tell them to look around them squadrons. today.
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I suppose that it must have been this common denominator
and between
the the
There was some rivalry be tween units. But there was not, in my experience, any dis- cord quite the reverse,
There can never have been so close-knit a company going
The Command.
familiar sights and sounds of NO GIVING UP
Perhaps there was a letter It is not surprising that you from a
watch people looking girl in your pocket, would
dinner date in utterly weary. It is not surpris- confirming a London, and you thought of the ing that, now and again, some- But it is, perhaps, surprising restaurant and the wine list and one's spirit cracked, the night club-the good and
that never at any place was ordinary things of life.
But at any second the tele there the smallest suggestion shatter that the whole thing was too phone might ring to your thoughts of normality, Fit much, or that we might be over- teen minutes later you might be whelmed in batile. Sixteen minutes later you might be dead. 'BE READY!'
The commanders knew it. The Air Council knew it. No doubt the War Cabinet knew it.
But the squadron pllots never see the were
very frightened, very
THEY ARE THERE
Look at that boy who lives in the next street, the one who takes his motor scooler abroad in the summer and comes back into battle together. There was Coming in to land, after the even thought about it They with a lot of pictures of pretty a touch of simple swank about scramble, you could girls.
it, and much more than a milk floats going from house to often. You could not help being Look at the long-haired young touch of genuine pride. man who spends half his time talking animatedly in caffer bars about life and politics.
Look at that gay fellow with too much money to be good for him, ways in night clubs or driving off to the south of France in his fast car.
There are your Batle of Bri- taln
plots, if you need them
again,
and
house; the chimneys were frightened when you had seen a Arrogantly, you may say, we smoking; work was starting a few "Damers" going in thought we were pretty good, the fields; men were leaving And the thought that we might their suburban houses to catch be beaten, by the Germans anyone else, did not enter our minds.
or
As an example in, humility our attitude left much to be de sired. As a mental spproach to a fight against odds it was prob-
I would never claim that the ably about right. pilots of Fighter Command in
the trains to the City.
You were coming back to normal. There would be a hat meal walling in the mess.
Back in the dispersal hut. the story was told.
"Smith's had it. The bastards gol Smith. Flamer. He never
As the battle developed and had a chance. I saw him go in
1940 showed any extraordinary came to a climax the true tem- near Maidstone."
brand of courage, by the stan dards which are expected and accepted in this country,
I think that scores of bat- tles and campaigns, equivalent bodies of Infantrymen success- fully faced and endured dangers which were just at great, and sometimes greater.
Few of us would willingly have changed places with the men who repeatedly sailed out to meet the U-boat packs in the Atlantie.
bomber
And what of the crews-the RAF who dew by right, the Americans by day who pressed on and on in the face of the most terrible caualties?
No one could say that the actual performance of the fighter pilots in 1940 showed, or required, a degree of herolam greater than any of these.
And yet there was something special about many of the men Enew in Figher Command-not specially heroic, but specially attractive.
The Royal Air Force, between the ware, attracted the brighter spirits Flying was still an aud venturous and exciling business.
W
"But don't my conscious 'and my mabomumelosta agree on
ing incoherently over the radio Perhaps heard the pilots shout- s they plunged down in their fiery planes,
But
You could not help being frightened when you know from personal experience what three or four dells trom a Me 109 could do to your Spitfire. you could not give up.
You were, in any case, too close to the others. If anyone did give up, he just disappeared and We never thought about him or tried to see him again, unless the circumstances were very exceptional
Only a very small number of the pilots of Fighter Command In 1940 have gone on to big things in the RAF. Most of them left the Air Force after the war.
A few of us meet, from time to Ume. We are more interesied In school bills, and whether to buy a washing-up machine and where to go for the family holl- days then in airplanes, or fighter tactics..
But if you scratch away the diffidence and get under the middle-age spread you will find traces of the old esprit de corpa, We never forget each other. And if you pressed us, we would have to admit that there will never again be a band of men we would rather belong to than the squadrons of Fighter Command.
-(London Exprenßervice),
WEDNESDAY:
CONCLUSION
BY THE LIGHT
OF YOUR GLOW-WORM · GLOW-WORMS
glowing more bright. ly this year.
Mr Alan Elphick, in fact, ean see the glow from 50 yaris in 20 years of observation ha has never known the light so bright.
Bays Mr Elphick, who is an Admiralty engineer: "We have a pet glow-worm in the garden
the lives at Bath). We call !!! 'Glitter."
"She glows so brightly that my wife was able to see ber glowing through my pocket the other night. And I can read a newspaper by her light"
I put the scientific world inte a bit of a flap when I began to probe Mr Elphick's claim
the other day.
Men who can happily tell the difference between a dicero- Thinus sumatrensis lasiotis and an erethizontida delved deep into their books and announced themselves bewildered.
BEETLES..
There was a long delay with the Natural History Museumn while they searched for their glow-worin man. Someone in the background said: " beetles- glow worms are beetles."
And suddenly a man was say- ing! "I can't think of my recent measurement of a glow. wonn's glow."
I braced myself and asked: What makes a glow-worm glow anyway?"
"Only the female glow-worm glows," he said. the ventral aspects of the rear portion of the abdomen are covered by a kind of screen of phosphorus- it's a sort of accident of nature and it has some attraction to male glow-worms."
I tried the Zoo. Non-cum- mittal. The Britsh Museu Speechless.
Finally I traced a man who should know — a glow-worr dealer, Mr. J. Christie of Streatham.
"I've been collecting glow worms for some time," he said. "And I can't say whether they are getting brighter or not."
"The only way, I suppose, is to place a light-meter Just behind a female glow-warm and measure for yourself."
That's if you really want to know,
Denis Pitts
-{London Express Service), i
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