Excerpt From Audio Interview with Stan Hope, W/O RAF

The Mosquito exit was very small but fortunately I’m fairly small myself, so, I remember Mac. . . I sat on the . . . kicked the door open, sat with my legs hanging out, shook hands with Mac, he kicked me on the shoulder and out I went. I was told to count to ten before I pulled the cord. I counted “one, two, three” and that was it, I pulled it! ‘Cos we weren’t very high – I’d say we were about 2,000 feet.

No, never, no. We’d had lectures on it but never jumped before. No, we never did a practice jump, so it was a bit of a new experience. It was quite thrilling actually because I saw the plane disappear – just a glimpse of it, the ‘chute opened with a jerk and the next thing I noticed was this eerie silence. After the plane engines everything was so quiet: I could hear a dog bark, I think I heard a train whistle somewhere in the distance and I was floating down in complete silence and it was dusk, there was no cloud about and I landed very gently in a field of cows who came over to see what this white thing was floating about. Anyway, I buried the parachute, stuffed it in a hedge and started exploring. I saw a light in a farmhouse, I was in Belgium. Now this is extraordinary. I landed not far from where my grandmother was born. She was born in Belgium and she was born in a place called Hal in the country and I finished up a few miles from Hal. The first signpost I saw was Hal and as soon as I saw that I knew where I was. I had no idea up ’til then.