Flight-Sergeant Innes Fights With the Maquis

rpHIS is Flight-Sergeant lan Innes, A RAAF, who recently returned to +i . Lon .?, on to become a member of the Catterpillar Club” (pilots who have

bailed out) in rather remarkable circum stances.

In August “PIM” we reported how lan, son of Mr. and Mrs. Allen Innes, of Sala ■New Guinea, had gone missing in a Halifax bomber over France on June 25 As the weeks went by and no further word was received, we feared, in the manner of such things, that he had joined the band of gallant lads who will not return. But in early September as the Allied armies swept across Prance, came an amazing story from war corres pondents of how he, and other RAAF personnel shot down over occupied France m preceding months, had linked up with the Maquis and had fought their way out. • a * r & m ph received by his parents in Sydney in October, Flight-Sergeant Innes says that his aircraft was shot down by flak when returning from a job somewhere in the vicinity of Laon. The crew bailed out and Innes landed with a sprained ankle and a broken toe. It is presumed that he did not meet up with his crew again, but alone made his wav through the enemy lines and joined the Maquis, who already had been “reinforced” by other Allied airmen. The airmen fought alongside the Maquis until they met an advancing American Armoured Division, when further days of battle flowed before they got back to thl Allied lines and Paris from where thev were evacuated to England.