The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

camouflaged enemy trucks. Then spotting a larger park of some fifty enemy
vehicles from Guderian’s 10th Panzer, he shouted back to his observer, Joe
Strong, ‘Get a report back on this—’ when he felt as though he had been
smacked in the mouth with a wet fish and at the same moment saw his left
hand appear to momentarily disintegrate. With a sense of horror and
excitement, he muttered to himself, ‘I am hit’, then, stunned and not
thinking clearly, flew on towards Abbeville.
Gradually, he managed to gather his wits. His microphone was
shattered, his oxygen mask was full of blood and was dripping on his tunic,
and his hand was badly wounded at the base of his left forefinger; the skin
had peeled back like an orange, so that he could see the bone and tendons,
which looked curiously black. Spotting a few enemy columns, he then
banked and headed back for home. He could feel no pain – only relief that
he was still alive, mingled with apprehension that the treatment might prove
more painful than the wound. Odd thoughts flitted through his mind:
concern that he might meet some Messerschmitts, pride that he was a
wounded hero, hope that he might now get a few weeks off. ‘We got back to
Hawkinge without difficulty and I landed with no trouble at all,’ he
scribbled, ‘having lost much less blood than the gory mess suggested.’ Even
so, an ambulance was called, his hand was bandaged, and then he was taken
off to Shorncliffe military hospital. Another of 18 Squadron’s pilots was
now out of action – for the time being at any rate. That left just three.
The RAF might have been frantically pulling its squadrons back from
France, but this did not mean the Battle of France would not continue to
drain away Dowding’s precious fighters. Far from it, the mantle of
responsibility had now been handed over to Fighter Command. Spitfire
squadrons were now being sent over to the Pas de Calais to provide
protection for the first troops that were being despatched back to Britain:
the evacuation of non-fighting troops had begun on 20 May, while a number
of Hurricane squadrons – such as Pete Brothers’ 32 Squadron – were
rotated out of the fray having been operating almost non-stop since first
flying over to France. Dowding had been desperate to keep his Spitfires
away from the fighting, mainly because the supply situation was so bad that
he knew he could not have maintained their existence had they been shot
down in the kind of numbers he had suspected would – and indeed did –
happen in France. But with the losses to the Hurricane squadrons and with