Close Calls on the Way Back to England

Heroes Remember

Close Calls on the Way Back to England

Transcript

This one night they were, it was getting near the end of the war though, and hell, they were marching us from one bloody place to another, and we're just walking for miles, and this was getting near the end of the war at the time. And this is a time I'll never forget. And this time they put us in boxcars. And do you know where they stopped us overnight? Berlin. And while I was sitting in this bloody boxcar in Berlin, there, my buddies blew hell out of Berlin. I didn't think too much of that. Interviewer: Did you just stay overnight in Berlin? Yeah, we were just there overnight, that's all. Interviewer: Do you remember where you went after that? Well, not exactly where we went, but we were wandering around and then this, we had bypassed by our own troops, and so we started asking, we could all speak a little German and that, and we started asking the people there where the nearest airport was, and they told us. So we started walking and we walked, we walked quite a long ways. When we got to this airport, and the Yankees had it when we got there. And so they took us there, we, took us in and fed us, and we stayed there overnight. Then they put us onto this twin engine plane, and they were flying us back to London. And we were just over Holland and Belgium there, that's right on the coast there, and little places Holland and Belgium. And then they were right on the coast, and we were just going over that, and this bloody plane goes into a spiral dive. And I said, boy, what a bloody time to get it, we're on the way home. But he got it pulled out, and we were pretty damn close to the, to the Channel there, the English Channel, by that time. He got it pulled out and he landed at the airport in London. And we gets out of this plane and, hell, the whole tailplane had been shot away. And I guess that must have been, we were on a Yankee plane, so it must have been the Germans that, that did the shooting, I guess.

Description

Mr. Spackman describes some close calls he had on his way back to England from the POW camps.

Dale Spackman

Mr. Spackman was born into a farming family but, due to the death of his father when he was very young he was raised in Stirling, Alberta. Mr. Spackman joined the air force and served in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Mr. Spackman was shot down and taken as a POW. After being moved around within Europe he was eventually rescued and returned to England.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 02:43
Person Interviewed:: Dale Spackman
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Germany
Branch:: Air Force
Occupation:: Pilot

Language selection

Close Calls on the Way Back to England

Heroes Remember