On May 29th at 11 P.M. we were on our first operation to Wuppertal, Germany- finally flying towards Germany, over a a year and a half after enlisting. As the Mid-upper Gunner, I had a grand view, As we neared the French Coast we could see bursts of fire around us. This was our first sight of “Flack”. I’m sure everyone in our crew was nervous and scared. After a one hour flight through this we arrived near our target. In an instant my turret lit up like day. I knew then, we were caught in search lights. The pilot pulled up to dive on them but we stalled and went into a spiral dive, dropping 10,000 feet from an altitude of 21,000 feet. He gave notice to prepare to abandon the aircraft and the Bomb-aimer, Noel Hapwood, took it for granted and bailed out. Fortunately, the pilot was able to trim the aircraft out. We then let our bombs go and headed back to England. We arrived back at our base at 5 A.M. on May 30th and blew a tire while landing. We proceeded to the Debriefing room to tell the sad story how we returned home without our Bomb-aimer. The next 2 weeks all the operations were canceled due to bad weather. In the meantime, we picked up a new Bomb-aimer. Pilot Officer Charles Young, 27 yrs. old, married, he was a Scotch chap. On June 11th, 1943 we prepared for our second mission on Dusseldorf. It went off fairly well, but we returned with 14 Flack holes in our aircraft. The next evening, June 12th, we took off on our third mission, this time to Bockum. We went in over Holland to get to Germany. It was a lovely calm night with a little moon. As we neared Ysselmuiden in Holland ( north east of Amsterdam) there was a large explosion. We had been hit by cannon shell from underneath and everything was on fire. The only one to speak was the pilot who said, “Abandon A/C, we’re on fire”. I climbed down from the Middle-Upper turret, went and opened the doors to the Tail-gunner so he could come in and bail out but he was not there- he must have been blown off, as his body was about 200 yards from where I landed. I then went to the tail door, put on my chute. When it opened the tail wing of the aircraft hit my back. I must have passed out from lack of oxygen but came to about 10,000 feet. My intercom cord had my chute partly split but I got out a knife and cut it, allowing the chute to fully open. I saw my aircraft burning in the distance. All of a sudden tree tops came up and I landed on my butt in a cow flop in Mr. Holtland’s field. Cattle were mooing all around. I had a bullet in my left leg, a toe missing on my right foot and a badly burned face. My face was very sore, so I took out my escape kit and spread the condensed milk over my burns to soothe them. I took of my parachute and got up to walk but fell, so I had to crawl. I headed towards what looked like buildings - luckily it was. I went over a creek on a board path and up to a house. After hammering on the front door, three men came around from the side of the house and helped me up and took me in the side entrance, through a milk-house. I recall what looked to be about eleven pairs of wooden shoes. It was a father and two of his sons that helped me. They were very hospitable Dutch folk.