Arnhem

But having to ditch didn’t necessarily mean stagnation in a POW camp. One of the best-known Arnhem pilots was Flight Lieutenant Jimmy Edwards, who became a celebrated comedian of post-war radio and the early days of television. He would be Mr Glum in radio’s Take It from Here and the cane-wielding headmaster in TV’s Whacko. Few of those watching him and laughing realized that his trademark, a flamboyant handlebar moustache, hid the scarring that resulted from his part in the Arnhem re-supply mission. He was always a funny man, full of loud bonhomie and vintage RAF humour. Before setting off from Down Ampney in the Dakota he had christened ‘The Pie-eyed Piper of Barnes’¹³ he nipped into the back to scrawl ‘Delivered courtesy of Jim Air’ on the panniers.¹⁴ But the run-in to Arnhem through heavy flak on what was his fourth sortie must have wiped the smile from his face. This was a more serious business than ever. He was about to give the signal to roll out the panniers over the designated DZ when he caught sight of a single green Very light coming up from the garden of a large house. In defiance of standing orders to ignore such things, he decided this was a bona fide signal from the lads below – and he was right. He was over the Hartenstein Hotel at Oosterbeek, and he dropped his cargo on the tennis courts.¹⁵ Then it was feet up for a leisurely cruise home. ‘I engaged George [the autopilot], and called for coffee and sandwiches.’

A German fighter plane spoiled his day. ‘I saw it approaching rapidly, and at our level. There were little sparkles of light on its wings, which could only mean it was firing at us.’ As it flashed by, he grabbed back control and tried to manoeuvre away. He was cross, as he later explained. He had a variety show to do that evening at camp, for which he’d specially written some new sketches, and there was now a danger he wouldn’t get the chance to air them. The Focke-Wulf 190 came charging in again. Edwards responded, as he had been trained, by turning in towards the attacker, who veered away. Then he sought safety in broken clouds below, but the fighter followed him in and was now dead astern. ‘He hit us time and time again until the wings were full of holes.’

Edwards twisted and turned in an ever tighter corkscrew. ‘My flying instruments were spinning crazily and I lost all track of time and sense of our whereabouts. It was amazing that the plane was still flying we had been hit so often.’ Not long after, it wasn’t. The propellers suddenly spun madly, their traction lost, and the starboard engine burst into flames. ‘We’d had it. I yelled for everyone to bale out.’ His co-pilot and navigator were gone, and he was about to grab his parachute and join them when he saw three of the dispatchers huddled in the back and making no attempt to exit. He roared at them to get out and, amid the raging noise and panic, he saw they were badly injured and unable to move. They had been hit by bullets and were in a bad way.

This was a moment for real grit, which Edwards had. ‘There was nothing for it but to try for a crash landing. I yanked open the escape hatch in the roof above my head, and stuck my head out to avoid the flames which were now enveloping the cockpit. With one hand on the wheel of the steering-column and the other held in front of my face for protection, I managed to keep her fairly level as we plunged down towards the ground. I instinctively pulled out of the dive at tree-top height and held the nose up as best I could while the speed dropped off. Then, with a rending and crashing, we plunged into the forest.’ The Dakota smashed through a plantation of young trees, which slowed it down instead of tearing it apart. Finally, the nose dug into the ground, and the tail came up in the air. ‘We hung poised for a split second, with the fuselage almost vertical, and then, with a sickening crash, the tail came down again, and with the impact I was shot out of the hatch like a cork from a bottle.’ He came back to earth alongside the now blazing aircraft. The three wounded dispatchers were still inside, and would never emerge from this funeral pyre.

Edwards was bereft. He had just two of his crew left – the radio operator and one of the dispatchers – and ‘moaning and cursing’ they stumbled to the shelter of a ditch among the trees. ‘We lay there, panting and trembling, and waited to see what would happen to us next. I had absolutely no idea where we were, except that it must be Holland. I didn’t really care much, for my hands were now shaking with shock, and the left side of my face was taut and stinging where I had been thrown through the flames.’ He’d ‘had it’, he admitted. If the Germans arrived, he would give himself up.