Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot John Hemingway recalls moment he was shot downRoyal British Legion Republic of Ireland
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00:00As Squad Leader Hill told us that the thing that's blowing up now, the war was on right
00:10from straight away from May the 10th.
00:15The British Army were going to advance through Belgium and hold them on the Meuse, but on
00:21the first day they were already over the Meuse and now it's shot down, I think, on the second
00:26day.
00:28Got off the ground and looking for Huns.
00:30I saw a Fieseler Storch and I thought it shouldn't be there, so I tried to attack it and it led
00:36me back to its guns.
00:39They clobbered me.
00:40Instead of that I turned west and footlanded straight away and I ploughed field and got
00:46away from my aeroplane as quickly as possible.
00:49I was walking west.
00:51I walked as far as Brussels and then spent hours on a railway, on a bridge, a road bridge
00:58waiting for a car and eventually a little Citroen turned up and we drove back to Lille
01:05and then I got back to the base and it had been bombed.
01:11A lot of the pilots were no longer, they weren't there, they'd been killed or a prisoner was
01:17shot down.
01:22We were covering Dunkirk.
01:25That is the time I was in 253 Squadron, but we didn't actually see Dunkirk itself.
01:31We were in the air further into France looking for Huns that might be attacking or retreating
01:39forces.
01:42My uncle, he was a major in the Royal Ulster Rifles on the beaches of Dunkirk.
01:48He insisted that everybody shave in the morning and parade, morning parade for breakfast,
01:54although breakfast was probably a grain of sand or something.
02:00But they all got aboard ship, waded out and got aboard some sort of ship and back to England.