CAN Stanley Maxted Recounts German Attack On

Last night I believe you heard Richard Dimbleby's account of the break away from our glider of the big Halifax that was towing us. Well, after that there was just a minute or two of quiet as the great Hamelcar ran in with the sound of the rushing wind in her wings.

Then, when just a few feet off the ground, pandemonium broke loose. The wicked snap of spandile machine guns mixed with the slower bong of 20mm in centuries for just a fraction of a second before they started pricking out their trademark in the thin skin of the glider.

Things seemed to happen too quickly for me to take them all in at once. There was an explosion that appeared to be inside my head. The smell of burnt cordite. I went down on one knee.

Something hot and thickly was dripping over my right eye and off my chin and all over my clothes. There was a doom-like lurch and a great rending as smoke, dust, and daylight came from nowhere.

I saw my pal Peter Cattle lying on one elbow with blood making a spider web over his face. One of the men was on the floor, staring fix-ed-ly at nothing as one of his legs rigid in front of him with quivering and convulsions like a stricken eel.

I saw the Bren carrier go inexorably out of the nose of the glider, carrying the whole work ahead of it, and wiping two signers off the top of it like flies. Then the bullets kept crashing through the wreckage.

It didn't seem fair, but then there's no fair or unfair in airborne fighting.