Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-12-06

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side. He landed in a field, picked
himself up, yelling at the top Of
his lungs, "Je suis Anglais, je suis
Anglais." CT am English, I am
EnglishD
He was in Belgium, all right. Bel
gian soldiers ran up all around him.
pointing their guns at him. But
they didn't fire and finally an Of
ficer came. And when the officer
recognized his uniform he told the
men to put down their rifles and
came up and embraced young Mr..
Harte.
The officer turned out to be
count, cousin of the King of Bel
GUM, and he took Harte back to
headquarters in his car to arrange
to have him sent on to the English
lines. When the time came for him
to go, the Belgian count who was
the cousin of the King said, Il
would much appreciate it if you
would give me souvenir of this
occasion. Perhaps your parachute?"
Harte said he didn't think he could
give him his parachute because
parachutes were expensive and they
would want him to bring it back.
So they settled on his pipe.
Very Special Occasion.
So he asked the count why it was
he wanted a souvenir And the
count said, Il don't think you I'M
derstand. I'm in command of the
aircraft battery. Yours is the
first plane by battery has ever shot
down. 1t is very special occasion"
1t. Harte thought it was a little
too special.
After the Belgium episode It.
Harte was ordered back to England
to get himself another plane Dun
kerque was very close now. He and
some other officers went across the
Channel on foggy night in
trawler. When they were we'll off
the French coast they were hailed
IN the dark by an English voice.
1t asked who they were. Since it
was an English voice, they replied
honestly. But the English voice
turned out to be coming from a Ger
man torpedo motor boat and 1t was
followed by machine-gun fire.
1t. Harte's trawler was sunk by
a torpedo and he was picked up by
another and brought on across the
Channel.
Flies His Plane Back.
BY the time he got back to Eng
land and rejoined his squadron,
Dunkerque was over. He began to
fly Hurricanes, which he liked better
than Spitfres. His next two Incl
dents were not as dramatic as the
first. He was simply shot down
twice and both times flew his Hurri-
cane to land on English soil Once
he was fighting over the Channel
and once over the Thames estuary
On neither occasion did he know
where the bullet came from that
disabled his plane He was simply
flying along and all of sudden his
motor was hot and things began to
60 wrong. The first time he had a
choice as to whether to make a
landing in enemy territory or try
to get home. He decided to try to
get home. He knew the motor was
hit in some vital point because the
temperature began to rise, but that
was all. The temperature kept on
rising all the way home. When he
was over England, but before he
had found his field, the cooling fluid
caught fire.
The next time it happened was
very much like the last, except that
1t. Harte now had had some expert
ence with cooling fluid catching fire
and after his motor reached GER
tain temperature he shut it of. The
motor Immediately froze. There was
no airport in sight, so he came down
in a field.
The field that 1t Harte picked
out when he was 5000 feet high did
not look so good when he was only
a few hundred feet up. At the far
end of the field there was farmers
house. BY the time he had finally
decided on the unsuitability of the
field. the top of the farmers house
was higher than he was, so that he
had to use the last of his speed to
get up and over it, to get to what
he hoped was a better field on the
far side.
Somewhere in the air just beyond
the house the Hurricane stopped
flying. 1t went into the ground
nose first at something over hum
dred miles an hour. The nose with
the motor in it broke off and 1t.
Harte and the rest of the plane went
on across the field. He was not
hurt.
He admitted that the next time
he was shot down it might make
a story. That time-his fourth
he was functioning as "Tail-Last
Charlie" for a squadron of Hurri-
canes and they were flying over
enemy territory, going down along
the German-held coast of France.
"Tail-Last Charlie is what they
call the pilot who flies above and
behind a squadron of pursuit planes
and weaves back and forth in figure
Fights to protect the squadron's rear.
Three Shells in Tail.
It was late afternoon and they
were flying east and the sun was
right up behind him. Two Messer-
schmitts with cannon came out of
this sun and were on his tail before
he could do anything about it. AS
they dived they made ~" about
As degrees wide, converging on the
back of his neck. Both Of them let
go from very close. crossed and went
under him and disappeared. Two
shells from one and one shell from
the other hit his Hurricane in the
tail assembly.
The three shells tore off not quite
half the covering of the horizontal
tail and the f1ippers and part of the
vertical stabilizer fin and part of the
rudder
1t never occurred to Harte until
much later in his story to throw in
the casual fact that the shell ex-
plosions had given him a shower