Being Shot Down!

The thirteenth of May, 1944, we were shot down. We had made a trip to Hasselt, which is in Belgium and our, at that time, it was two bomb, what they call a marshalling yard, this is where they assemble or disassemble trains and that so they can have the right cars going in the right direction and that. And I thought we were hit by flak, but my wireless operator and the pilot said it was a fighter that got us and it was confirmed later on, they were right. Anyway, we all bailed out. It’s interesting to note that, well like our starboard fuselage was on fire, one starboard engine was on fire and our pilot said, “Jump, jump!” Okay, there’s two orders that normally happen, one is, the pilot will say, “Prepare to abandon aircraft.” This is when it looks like an emergency is coming up. Then each one in their order, like the rear gunner would answer, “Rear gunner prepared, mid upper gunner prepared,” we’d go through the whole crew like that, that we heard him and we were prepared to jump. But when a pilot says, “Jump jump!” no questions are asked, you just get out.