Phil Elger/Bill Evans - The French Resistance, part 2

Transcript

Bill: Two members of my crew had been rescued by the Resistance and they came to this castle too and this bloke said 'Look, I will go ahead on my bicycle and you three come along.'

The three of us went along and fortunately my other two friends helped me because I couldn't walk and we didn't see anyone. Oh, we saw two soldiers, that's right, and we just passed them, sort of said 'How do you do?'

This is out in the country, you know. Very strange. And they said they were going to take us to safety.

Oh, it's marvellous. Anyway, they took us to a railway station, a little railway station, Fontenbleu or something and there we met a bloke who spoke English and he was sitting at a radio and he was the Resistance leader for the area and, you know, it was absolutely amazing and we couldn't get over it and he said 'Oh, it's a good camp. We've got a chef from Paris there and he does all the cooking and it's really nice and he said 'In a short time a little aircraft will come over and take you back two by two.'

Anyway we got into the centre of this forest and there we met other men who had been there for some little time and we told them what was said and they said 'Yes. Bull.'

It never happened and I was in the forest for nearly two months and we had droppages. England knew we were there, Intelligence, and they would arrange droppages from an aircraft. They would drop some food, that sort of stuff, you know, and clothes. It was very, very strange.

The first droppage we had from an aircraft was, what would you expect? I would have expected food. Remember this is from England. Lice powder. Can you imagine? Here we were waiting for a lovely meal and we get lice bloody powder. Well England expects every man to be clean and healthy, you know, what better than lice powder to keep you that way.