Lieutenant J E P Howey, Royal Flying Corps, Great Staughton
I was captured at Courtrai at 10 a.m. on the 11th of this month (November), and I met two German Officers there who knew several English people that I knew, and they were most awfully kind to me. They gave me a very good dinner of champagne, oysters, etc, and I was treated like an honoured guest. I then came by train the next day to Mainz, where I was confined in a room by myself for two days. I have now been moved into a general room with eight other English Officers where we sleep and eat. We are treated very well and play hockey and tennis in the prison yard. Poor B––––, I was so sorry he was killed, he was such a nice boy and only 19. I had a fight with two German aeroplanes and then a shell burst very close to us. I heard a large piece whizz past my head, and then the aeroplane started to come down head first spinning all the time. We must have dropped about 5,000 feet in about 20 seconds. I looked round at once and saw poor B–––– with a terrible wound in his head and quite dead. I then realised that the only chance of saving my life was to step into his seat and sit on his lap where I could reach the controls. I managed to get the machine out of that terrible death plunge, switched off the engine and made a good landing on terra firma. I shall never forget it as long as I live. The shock was so great that I could hardly remember a single thing in my former life for two days. Now I am getting better and my mind is practically normal again. We were 10,000 feet up when B–––– was killed, and luckily it was this tremendous height that gave me time to think and act. I met one of the pilots of the German machines which attacked us. He could speak English quite well and shook hands after a most thrilling fight. I brought down his machine with my machine gun and he had to land quite close to where I landed. He had a bullet in his radiator and petrol tank, but neither he nor his observer were touched.
