Pilot shot down over France joined Resistance to fight on Fromthepagesof the StirlingObserver September1944

A Stirling flyer was back home in September 1944 after being shot down over enemy-occupied France and spending two months dodging the Germans and helping the French Resistance.

In an amazing story of World War Two derring-do, Sgt John Carey, a flight engineer with the RAF, told how on June 24, 1944, he was aboard a Lancaster bomber which was so badly damaged by flak and German night fighters over North-West France that the crew baled out and became separated.

Four were taken prisoner by the Nazis but Sgt Carey, 24, whose parents lived in Port Street, Stirling, drifted into an area of German coastal defence.

He took shelter in a concrete pill box and on one occasion ash flicked from a German sentry’s cigarette almost landed on him. He was able to get away undetected and headed inland in the hope of joining French Resistance fighters.

For the first four or five days, he lived on food from his escape kit but when that ran out he sustained himself on fruit and turnips taken from farms and orchards.

Exhausted by the time he made contact with the Resistance, he was ill for a fortnight but was guarded by the French freedom fighters and nursed back to health, even though German troops were massing in the area for a counter attack.

“It is impossible to put into words how good those people were to me,” he said.

Recovered but unable to leave, Sgt Carey joined the Resistance on a number of `escapades’ including an attack on a bridge over the Somme.

`Somehow the Germans must have got a tip about the raid and had reinforced the guard, so we didn’t succeed in what had been planned but it was quite a party,’ said the flyer.

He told how, as Allied armies approached the area – following the D Day landings in June 1944 – the whole of the French population rose up against the Germans.

“It was a grand sight to see the Nazis getting off their mark half dressed and in bare feet,” said Sgt Carey.

He joined the Resistance to `capture a few

Germans’ in a final round-up. Five were intercepted and two surrendered immediately but three others were only snared after a running battle in a wood.

`The Resistance boys like to have plenty of armament on them and I was decked out in a bandolier and a whopping big revolver,” he added. “We had quite a shooting match in that wood.”

It was September 3, 1944, before the flight sergeant saw the first of the Allies advance and that was a Polish lance corporal and members of a reconnaissance party.

Two Polish soldiers took him to their headquarters where he discovered that the Polish company had been stationed in Stirling for a time.

`When they learned that Sgt Carey was from

Stirling there was great jubilation,’ said the Observer. `The Poles whooped and clasped their hands boxer fashion above their heads and shouted “how’s Millar’s dancing?” and “what like is the good old Golden now”. They had happy memories of Stirling.’

The flight sergeant tried without success to meet up with his younger brother James, who had been with the Eighth Army from El Alamein to Italy and was with the 51st Division in France.

He managed to obtain transport back to the French coast, passing the town of Caen which had been `flattened out’ during the fighting, and flew back to London before heading to Stirling.

Educated at St Modan’s High and St Ninians,

Sgt Carey worked as a machinist with the Stirling Floorcloth Company, Abbey Road, Stirling. He and a pal were about to leave for Canada when war broke out and both joined the forces. His elder brother, Patrick, was an RAF corporal.

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