"I had shot dovn-a l09E on a sweep over ' France , and was chased by another which had in the meantime gained advantage of height and position. So I went down to ground level and set off for home - weaving all the way. After I had gone a few, miles I saw tracer bullets flash over my wings so I decided to get down to some serious low flying.

I carried on flying under telegraph wires and hopping over hedges. for a short while until finally I hopped over, one' hedge which, unfortunately,had a slight incl1ne on the other side. I hit this incline with a sickening "whoosh," but managed to drag the aircraft off the ground. My speed dropped from 340 to 240 but, more important from my polnt of view -. the Hun behind me had stopped firing. I had a quick look round the cockpit and found things reasonably normal. I was getting some vibration now, but the aeroplane was flying quite nicely. I managed to get into some cloud over the channel and had time to check over the cockpit , Except for the vibration. and a natural loss in revs.,' everything was more or less normal.