Reunion tells the extraordinary tale of one Rustington man’s stand against the Nazis

FORMER comrades in arms were united once again on Saturday (January 28), to celebrate the 90th birthday of a retired Rustington clergyman and Second World War fighter pilot.

The Rev George Wood was left “overwhelmed” and “emotional” when four of his wartime colleagues travelled from across the country to the Windmill Inn, in Mill Lane, Rustington, to mark the occasion.

During George’s party, friends Johnny Shellard, Jerry Eaton, David Ince and Derek Lovell reminisced about their harrowing days as fighter pilots, bombing German airfields in France.

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Speaking to the Gazette after the party, George, of Orchard Gardens, said: “It was very a emotional day.

“After the party, we were all telling stories of the war, which was very touching.”

None was more dramatic than George’s account of his extraordinary escape from the Gestapo in 1943, after his Whirlwind fighter-bomber was shot down over Brittany.

George, then a flight sergeant in the RAF, was forced to bail out of his plane on September 23, 1943, after it was hit by flak following a bombing run of the German-controlled Ploujean airfield, near Morlaix, in north-eastern France.

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Grace Seymour, who is helping to compile a book about the 90-year-old’s wartime experiences, said: “A Spitfire escort following George saw his plane erupt into flames.

“He said it was like a flower blossoming out. They all thought there was no chance for him.”

She added that all that was left of George’s plane, in the wake of the explosion, was a battered cockpit section, which was tumbling through the sky.

“George told me that he thought to himself ‘I will dig my own grave with this plane’. He couldn’t free himself from the cockpit,” she said. “As he thought about it, he cried out, ‘God, please help me!’. The next thing he knew he was free from his plane and parachuting down.”

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Enemy anti-aircraft fire zipped past George as he fell to earth. After a nerve-racking few minutes, he managed to land.

With the Germans in hot pursuit, he sprinted across a field, which, unbeknown to him, was full of hundreds of live anti-tank mines – and climbed into a tree to hide.

“The Germans stopped chasing me,” said George. “Clearly, they knew there was a minefield there. But I hadn’t the slightest clue. It’s a miracle I didn’t trip one of the mines.”

George was eventually taken into the care of the French Resistance and was given the identity of a deaf and dumb undergraduate studying English at Montpelier University.

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He was then escorted to a safe house in the seaside town of Carantec.

It was here that he encountered the town’s branch of the Resistance, which had already helped smuggle dozens of stranded men from the Allied forces out of the war-torn country, to Cornish ports across the Channel.

Resistance member and boat maker, Ernest Sibiril, and his brother Leon agreed to ship the pilot back to England in a daring rescue effort, in a rebuilt fishing craft.

However, with the Gestapo net rapidly closing in on George and the Resistance, the escape vessel, entitled Le Requin (The Shark) was to be the last boat to set sail for England, from Carantec.

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Built in the record time of just 11 days, Le Requin was launched on the stormy night of October 31. Disaster almost struck within seconds, as the vessel lurched off the slipway and capsized.

Several men jumped into the icy water and successfully righted the boat, just in time to catch the tide. Eight passengers were taken on board, including George.

Evading the attention of a chain of German look-out posts along the French coast, Le Requin edged its way across the Channel and 30 hours after leaving Carantec was picked up by the Royal Navy off Eddystone Lighthouse, off the Cornish coast.

George’s friend Bryn Goodfellow, of Cowdray Drive, Rustington, has visited the site of the flight sergeant’s heroic bid for freedom.

He said: “George’s escape was extraordinary.

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“He has a section in the maritime museum, in Carantec, dedicated to it. It’s truly remarkable how he managed to evade German capture.”

George is currently in the process of drafting a book, based around both his own experience and those of other fighter pilots, during the war.

He hopes that, once completed, his journal – entitled A Life in a Day of a WW2 Fighter Pilot – could be used to help raise funds for servicemen’s charity Help for Heroes, as well as St Peter and Paul’s Church, in the village.

He said: “The life of a fighter pilot during the Second World War was fraught with danger.

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“You could live an entire lifetime in a single day, with some of the experiences you had to go through.

“Each day you could have been killed. There were three separate occasions, on the day I crashed, where I could have been killed.”

There is no set release date for George’s book. However, he hopes it might be available later this year.

It promises to be a remarkable account of a remarkable life.

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