27. A Rough Landing and a Lucky Escape
Captain Partridge and Lieutenant Bostock came through the crash landing relatively unscathed, without either being much the worse for wear. The same could not be said for the German bomber crew they had shot down. It consisted of Lieutenant Horst Schopis, the pilot; Sergeant Karl-Heinz Strunk, the crew chief; Lance Corporal Josef Auchtor, the plane’s mechanic; and Private Hans Hauk, the tail gunner.
The Luftwaffe airmen’s return to earth had been far tougher than that of Partridge and Bostock. All the Heinkel’s crew were dinged up when their plane crash-landed in the mountains, and Hauk, the tail gunner, was killed. Although the rest of the crew had managed to escape death, they too, like the British airmen who had shot them down, were in serious trouble.
