Crowley Milling

Crowley Milling – Crowley, our Flight Commander, was shot down along with Billie Raine and Pete Wright early one morning. We didn’t hear what happened to Crowley and we were resigned to thinking that he was missing and presumed dead. Billie and Pete were killed. Several weeks went by. Well, while McWatt and I were playing a game of shove-hapenny in the Flight hut, who should walk through the door but the living ghost, Crowley. He managed to escape when he bailed out over France. He told us of his experiences thinking that they might be of value to anyone who might be shot down and able to escape in the future. He told of sleeping with a big pig in a barn for a number of nights, and he related, “The stench of the pig was horrible but the heat that pig gave off was tremendous.” He mentioned that while on the move in urban areas he rested by standing in queues, and that he stayed in prostitutes’ houses whenever possible. One of the most ingenious actions that he made was when he was walking along a country road and all of a sudden he stumbled onto a Nazi guard post ahead. They spied him, but Milling, always the fast thinker, immediately pulled his trousers down and had a crap right in the middle of the road. Then he progressed in the direction of the guard post incorporating the actions of some local idiot, with the result that the guards would have nothing to do with him and they let him go on his way. (The well organized underground escape system in France was developed later on.)

Crowley was dead against administrational bumpff as were all good fighter pilots. He backed me up when, on one occasion, I broke an order without being aware of the order. While I was in our little hospital for a number of days, the Group Captain issued an order forbidding any more dangerously low aerobatics over the aerodromes in his command. I had just gotten out of the hospital and was dying to fly. I got airborne for some local flying when the order dribbled down to Crowley’s desk. Before I landed, I put my Spit (DW-V) just above the grass of the field, went past the windsock on a post at the perimeter of the field, and then went straight up into an upward Charlie. The only person driving on the country road and near the windsock that morning was the Groupie. I was on the mat. Crowley insisted that he should go into Group Captain Woodall’s office ahead of me in order to explain the situation. He did. I went in. The Group Captain gave me a warning. Crowley and I saluted smartly then whistled out of there quickly.