The Big Party. She had also accompanied Lepers and Cole on their previous trip to Marseille which took Dvr Strachan mentioned below. They crossed the Pyrenees in separate parties, organised by the Ponzan-Vidal organisation, in March and met up again in London.
He claimed one Me before he became one of eight Spitfires lost on that mission. Norbert Fillerin quickly arranged for Alex to see Dr Guy Delpierre from nearby Fauquembergues who treated Nitelet for more than six weeks until he was sufficiently recovered to be moved to Lille and then on to Burbure to join the group being assembled there for the long journey south.
Click here for more details about Alex Nitelet. In the early hours of the morning of 27 August , the six man crew baled out over Catillon, south-east of Cambrai in northern France. Bufton walked to the first house in Catillon where he was given food and an overcoat and then met a farmer who directed him to the barn where he found fellow crew-member Sgt Bill Crampton.
When Sgt William F Crampton landed he used his button compass to start him in the right direction to look for his companions. He found a man who pointed him towards the farm where Sgt J T Stickles, Sgt S R Murray and Sgt D A Wright were hiding but before he could reach them he was diverted to the barn where he met Bufton - they later learnt that the other three men were captured that day. Bufton and Crampton stayed hidden in the barn until evening when the farmer took them a few miles south to another farm near Guise where they were hidden in a duck-shooting hut for ten days.
Finally they were taken on to La Madeleine where they found the last member of their crew still at liberty, Ken Read. Sgt Kenneth B Read landed near Landrecies, a little further north than the others. After several hours walking he met a Belgian who hid him in his house in a nearby village where he learnt that three of his fellow crewmen had been captured. After a trip to Lille for new clothing and an identity card, he was reunited with Bufton and Crampton and the three men taken to Burbure where they were to be hidden for the next three weeks.
