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ALAN CLARK REMEMBERS:
I was John Hodgkinson's number 2 when he was shot down near the Casarsa rail diversion.
After bombing, he called me up, sounding rather cross, to come up close and tell him what was wrong with his bloody aeroplane. I closed in and noticed large bits falling off the back of his plane. I was mulling over just how to break this news to him when his plane suddenly went into a vertical dive, hit the ground and exploded. Hodgy's bought it I thought; but in the same moment a parachute opened and he hit the ground with a hell of a thump right beside the burning plane. As I circled he lay motionless while some bods ran towards him. At least a broken back I thought and as things were warming up a bit, I headed for home.The Squadron straggled home, even more untidily than usual, instead of assuming a planned, impeccable and tight echelon formation aimed at impressing a D.A.F. film unit which had arrived at Cervia that day to take P.R. movies.
Earlier on, they had filmed the briefing while we all stood around doing our best to look alert and intrepid. I believe the film subsequently appeared on Australian newsreel screens. I'm sure that, wedged amongst the Cervia footage, there were some extraneous shots of excellent echelon formation flying.
Several weeks later, we lost our other Flight Commander, Barney Davies, who copped it over Yugoslavia. Again I was Shabby Red 2 and was witness to one of the sweetest (and seemingly nonchalant) bale-outs a sprog could hope to see. Mind you Barney had had a fair bit of practice at this sort of thing but his bunting bail-out was just perfect, rather similar to the ejection technique developed later in jets.
Witnessing such expertise was a great help to me when my turn came a couple of weeks later. This was done with considerably less skill and coolness than Barney's.After wandering about Yugoslavia for a month, I found myself in the area where Barney had gone down. Without much hope I enquired about an "Australiano Capitano" and was directed to a hill overlooking the Sava River. There sat Barney, lost in thought gazing into the Teutonically occupied distance. I came up behind, slapped him on the back and said "G'day Barney".
"Jesus Christ, Nobby Clark" was his startled reply.
We eventually crossed the river and, as the war reached its dramatic conclusion, made our way to Ljubjana where we were picked up by some Kiwis who were on a (somewhat illegal) foraging trip into Slovenia. They took us into Trieste, a city full of tension and turmoil where erstwhile allies, the 8th Army and Marshall Tito, were in confrontational mode.
Not knowing where the Squadron was, or indeed how to find out where it was, we wandered into the city's main square. In the middle of the square was a large crowd of people milling around a truck. A figure was standing on the back of the truck flogging cigarettes and bully beef. A closer look showed the truck to be a 3 Squadron one and the driver, Bill Sims!
To his eternal credit Bill ceased trading and took us aboard. The Squadron it seemed was in the process of moving north to the environs of Udine, and Bill, it seemed, was supposed to be on an errand several hundred kilometres in another direction. We undertook not to tell Murray Nash and he undertook to drive us back.
Actually this drive was the hairiest part of the whole adventure. Driving a right hand drive 3 tonner on the right hand side of the road, weaving in and out of the traffic on the cliffside roads of the Italian coast was a trip I will never forget! Even the normally phlegmatic Barney had white knuckles.
We arrived at Sammadenchia at about the same time as the advance party to be greeted, among others, by Jock Gale, Norm Saville and Norm French as near as I can recall.After the war I started a course in Dentistry at Sydney University. At the first clinical session a tall figure dominated the room. It was John Hodgkinson!
All this is anecdotal (and self indulgent) rather than historical but Hodgy's remarks started the memories flowing. Another interesting fact about this period late in the war was the number of pilots shot down who survived. If memory serves, in a period of a few weeks we "lost" Hodgy, Barney, myself, Mclnerny (same job), Ken Higgins, Ian Redenbach, Don Williamson and Jim Edmonds. Of all these only 'Jungle Jim' was killed.