War Epic
Bill Knaggs, at the ripe old age of 22, was the oldest of
the
7-man Lancaster bomber crew that was shot down over northern France
in the summer of 1944. He was the crew's bomb aimer. Bill's
remarkable story is told in The Easy Trip, published by,
and available from, Perth and Kinross Libraries.
Sadly only two of the crew survived the incident, and when Bill's
parachute hit the ground, he was very much on his own. He was well
behind enemy lines and in an alien country whose culture and
language he didn't know. He realised he could be killed at any
time and his immediate future was completely uncertain. The
story is by any standards a remarkable one; from the moment he hit
the ground, trying to reason what had happened to him amid noise,
trauma and confusion, Bill officially and unwantedly became an
"evader". The Lancaster's mission had been to destroy deadly German
V2 rocket sites - rocket-propelled weapons that were targeted at
Britain's major population centres with the potential to wreak
havoc and mayhem. Meanwhile the Germans were quickly able to tell
that his plane had been shot down and that two of the crew were "at
large" and so Bill had to think and move fast. He had no one and
nothing to give him any hope. He knew he needed luck,
courage, help and a cool head if he was to survive.
Before the aircraft left their base close to the English coast, the
crews had been assured it would be a quick and trouble-free
mission, hence the book's title. The story of a man's
determination, allied to his resourcefulness and the help from
French people who risked summary execution if found to be assisting
the enemy, is a moving and gripping one. It is a real-life
adventure story, rivalling the best of fiction, and it tells of a
reluctant hero who managed to evade capture and return safely
home.
Bill now lives in Stanley, just to the north of Perth, and he has
been back more than once to France to meet descendents of the
people who helped him and to receive the genuine gratitude of
people who were eventually liberated by his forces' colleagues. The
paperback book, carrying photographs, maps and facsimile documents
from the time, is available from the
AK Bell Library Shop.
