and you were shot down, they're not gonna give you a cup
of tea or then say come sit down by the fire
and have a warm and have a bowl of soup.
They're probably gonna knock
seven bells out of you or interrogate you.
So, to give us an idea, what would happen,
they used to put us on escape and evasion exercises.
The idea was it's two o'clock in the morning,
they'd wake you up to put your flying suits on
and your flying boots.
They'd give you a map with no directions on it,
nothing except a map.
They'd give you a pack of sandwiches and they'd say, right,
and they'd put you in a vehicle like a coach.
All the windows would be taped over
so you couldn't see where you were
and they'd drive you through the night.
You couldn't see where you were going.
Drop you off and they'd say, right,
you have to get back to the rendezvous.
So you'd have to get out of the coach
and away you'd go to get back
to wherever the rendezvous was.
Now, that's easy enough.
But you didn't know where you were.
The army, the navy, the RAF,
the police were all looking for you.
If you were caught, you'd obviously interrogate you,
try and find out where you were going.
So I got into this village in the pitch black
and I could see a direction sign
so I shinned up it and guess what it said?
Wet paint.
(laughs)
So I slipped down the post, covered in paint
and got caught by a big policeman.
So he locked me up, I was taken away and locked up
in St Ives jail, where I was interrogated.
They didn't do anything particularly nasty to me
but I was in there for two days.
