Diving from Enemy Fire

Heroes Remember

Diving from Enemy Fire

Transcript

Found our airfield still at Evreux near Paris. Got back to them, and then eventually moved to, from Evreux to Belgium, an airfield there at Deist. So we eventually arrived at Eindhoven in the middle of Holland in September, at the end of September, beginning of October. Somewhere in that range. I had, had quite an exciting experience at Eindhoven. We were still based in Belgium and I had done a reconnaissance over the bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen when the drop was on. And... Interviewer: My golly. I had no idea. (Oh yeah.) That must have been an extraordinary sight again. Oh an incredible sight. To see these poor guys jumping out of those air planes was fantastic. And what had happened was, a short time thereafter I, I think it was Bill Goldwyn (sp) out of St. Thomas who was with me, I'd done a recce over the bridges, landed at Eindhoven to deliver our intelligence report quickly. Even though we're still based to the south at Deist in Belgium. We landed and we were told to go to the west side of the airfield, with a Typhoon squadron, we shut down there, got in a truck, the back end of a truck to go to the east side of Eindhoven to be debriefed. And as we drove across, we were standing in the back of this truck, a huge canvas thing over us. And somebody else who was in this truck as well said, "Oh, look at the Spitfires shooting up the airfield." And I looked out. I then focussed and they weren't Spitfires at all they were ME 109s. And one of them came straight towards us and the truck was doing about 30 miles an hour and this guy was just about to open fire. I jumped out of the truck. And just as he was about to open fire he turned slightly and went for an airplane that we were passing. The airplane was a much better target than the truck. Otherwise we.. that was the ball game. Incredible, I can still see that happening. But that was part of what we were going through at the time, it was very... and Typhoons are taking off from Eindhoven at that point and just to the north airfield they were attacking German troops.

Description

The Squadron moves into Eindhoven and Mr. Rohmer describes one particularly close call he experienced.

Richard Heath Rohmer

Major General Rohmer was born in Hamilton, Ontario on January 24, 1924. He enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force on his eighteenth birthday. He had received some training in Canada before being shipped overseas to Bournemouth for further training on both Spitfires and Mustangs. He chose to fly a Mustang and was finally able to get into operations in the Fall of 1944.

General Rohmer provided reconnaissance for D-Day, the Falaise Gap and the Liberation of the Netherlands.

After the war, General Rohmer instructed Spitfire pilots on how to attack in the air at Gunnery Instructor School and later went back to college in Ontario, Canada. After graduating from college he went on to practice law. General Rohmer has received several awards throughout his illustrious career including the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Canada Defence Medal and is an Officer of the Order of Canada just to name a few. General Rohmer is also a best selling author.

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