He was
not in our prison camp so I did not see him until we were in Atlantic
City for discharge. He told me that all four had landed safely and
that when he came down in his parachute, he went through an old barn
roof and landed in a pile of manure.
At about this time we made another move to a field near Maidstone, a
small town southeast of London. We were closer to the Channel here
and the field was entirely different. Some one else flew my plane
down here and I went by train with the rest of the group. It is
interesting to note that we went through the village of Sittingbourne
where my mother was born. The train didn't stop so I had no chance to
visit there. Our living conditions at Maidstone were different: in a
tent with a dirt floor in the middle of an apple orchard. There were
four of us in each tent sleeping on army cots with a stove in the
middle for heat. On warm days we could role up the sides of the tent
for ventilation. Another tent was the mess hall and we ate sitting on
the ground under the apple trees. We ate with our army mess kits and
rinsed them out in a barrel of hot water.
This was much different from the beautiful place where Len Pierce was
stationed. The runway at Maidstone was a grass field surrounded by
trees. They put heavy wire mesh in the ground to keep us from sinking
in when the field was muddy. It was a bumpy field to begin with! The
field was not very long and you had to get down before running into
the trees at the and of the runway.
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