Arthur David "Dave" Dennis (Primary Source)

Transcript

[Flying over Germany with 408 Squadron, RCAF, in a Halifax bomber] We left the aircraft and the skipper and I had a little conference, he wanted me to stay with him while he flew in the round. And we had no top, no roof, no right side and I had no belt to anchor me to the plane. And I could just see me bouncing on the ground and here was a 12 foot propeller, five feet away from me in the open. Now, I could just see me getting chewed off with that. And I told him, nothing doing, I’m going to go out the hatch. And my parachute had taken a beating in the aircraft before I put it on and with the shell. But I put it on and jumped in it anyway and when I opened up, I had about two thirds of a parachute left, so I was falling quite rapidly but it was reducing my speed quite a bit. And I was right over a wood lot, went right into the trees and got my legs clamped together and covered up my face and waited and waited. I thought, oh, everything’s quiet. And I’m not moving. I had to sort of reason with myself. So I finally snuck a peak out from underneath my arm and I was about a foot off the ground. The parachute had landed in the tree and stopped me. And when I dropped out of it and walked back and had a look, our orders were that you didn’t leave your parachute exposed, you buried it and I walked back and took a look at it and there was a branch through every single hole. And the tree owned the thing and I said it out loud, if George wants that buried, he could bury it himself. So I had seen this white house on the side of the field and I walked up there, staying close to the fence posts, so I could duck if anybody started shooting at me. And got up to the house, climbed the fence and went up and rang the doorbell and I moved it back so it wouldn’t be right in their face and the young daughter open the door and went running, calling for her mother. And said to myself : ‘Oh my goodness, be quiet, don’t get everybody all shook up.’ And the mother came and I’m trying to get a sentence in my school boy’s German and she said in perfect English, beautiful English: ‘What do you want me to do?’ And I said: ‘Would you call the authorities for me, please?’ And could I have someplace to get in out of the wind, I was starting to feel the […]. And she took me by the arm and wheeled me to the house and down the corridor and all the time, she’s calling out instructions. And when we got to the end of the corridor, a beautiful bedroom, they had beach blankets put on the bed to save the bedding. And they rolled me up on that and got me comfortable and this was my introduction to Germany. And oh, in an hour’s time, the local doctor and the priest came and the priest said, they came together because if one wasn’t needed, the other one was. And the lady of the house was quite incensed but they took it so lightly, you know. But yeah, and he did up the wounds that were weeping and got me all comfortable and that was my introduction to Germany. They looked after me for three days. I was getting to the point where I could move around a little bit but she had two children, a boy and a girl, and her sister in law had two children, a boy and a girl, and the boys and the sister in law went into the next field to have a look at where the plane landed. Fortunately, it didn’t hit anything of theirs. But they had a dairy farm there. And as I got to know them more, I understood what it was, it was a summer home, Hermann [Josef] Abs, a chancellor of the Deutsche Bank [and chairman of the Deutsche Bank after the war]. I landed in the best place in Germany. [On camaraderie] I flew with six other fellows and I couldn’t have chosen any better if I had tried. They were gentlemen, they were intelligent, and they were flying. My navigator and bomb aimer were excellent. My bomb aimer was a fellow by the name of Mousseau, Frenchman, naturally he was called Moose. And the navigator went on to teach at Royal Roads University, Herbie was excellent, the smallest guy on the flight. But the two men that we lost were youngsters and they were great guys.