Description
Mr. Robertson describes the structure created by the crew underground.
William “Bill” Robertson
Mr. William “Bill” Robertson was born June 13, 1921 in Toronto, Ontario. He was raised in a family of five with three brothers and one sister. Growing up in the province of Ontario, Mr. Robertson received his grade 12 education and with the awareness of war, had a keen desire to join the Air Force. In 1942, he attended observer training and in April of that year received his wings. He held the rank of navigator with the RAF 158 Squadron. On May 13, 1944 during a routine flight towards Belgium, his aircraft was shot down and he and the surviving members of the crew spent many months in hiding from the Germans in the hopes of one day being free. As freedom became a reality, Mr. Robertson returned home to Canada with his wife Violet. He and his family reside in Belleville, Ontario.
Transcript
I must describe, for night time or if there was any word of the enemy being around, we’d go in hiding and what we’d hide was a hole in the ground just at the river, there used to be a stream, was pretty well dry then but a bit of a bank and they had cut a hole in and they had gone in and dug it out and maybe only about four and a half feet high or that when you went in, to the main room if I could call it that. And there was only approximate this wide eh? And off the so-called main room, there was another hole dug out to the right and one to the left. That is where we went to sleep at night or to hide. I jokingly always refer to it as the “Hole-a-Day Inn” and I remember, after a couple days, some of our other crew, eventually, we had all our crew there but our two Australian gunners. They were both, we heard by then that they had been taken prisoners of war. Anyway, there was now five of us from the aircraft, five Russians and we were all sleeping in this hole in the ground. The main room held four sleeping that way and each of these rooms, little rooms or holes on the side would hold three. I had the one on the right side, I think it was my navigator, no, my pilot and my wireless operator. The only thing is, if you wanted to turn over at night, the other two had to turn over as well. So when you got up in the morning, you felt pretty stiff, pretty cold. Oh, and the entrance hole, what we did, if you are familiar with bushel baskets, you know, bushel baskets apples come in and they also sometimes have a cover on them. They had like a cover from a bushel basket. They would stick all fresh foliage and that would be covering the hole where we went in. So it was well disguised.