The School House boys who captured a German airman

Sherborne School Fire watch book entry for 4 May 1941

On Sunday, 4 May 1941, Mr Walter Norton (the School Custos) reported in the School Fire Watch book:

‘German plane brought down and the Pilot missing. In the afternoon the Pilot surrendered to Mr Whitfield & Mr Everett [sic] two pupils at Sherborne School whilst out for a cycle ride near Corton Denham. These boys held up Mr A.R. Trevett of Cold Harbour, a Home Guardsman, who was driving a car and asked him to take the prisoner to the police station’.

A German Heinkel-IIIP2 bomber had been brought down the previous night by an RAF fighter aircraft five miles north of Sherborne at Sigwells near Corton Denham. The plane had crashed in flames, killing one member of the aircrew (Uteroffizier Albert Amode), but three others had managed to bale out, two of whom were quickly captured. One of the airmen, Unteroffizier Erwin Ehlers, had landed in the garden of the rural ARP Controller Mr Whatley, who lived a quarter of a mile from the crash site. Mr Whatley reported that ‘His parachute fell across some wires and when I got to it he had slipped out of the harness and had apparently gone into the shrubbery to take off his flying kit. He made his way back towards the field where the bomber was and was arrested by the Home Guard who were quickly on the scene.’ A second member of the aircrew, Unteroffizier Florian Piechota, had come down in the same field as the plane where he was arrested and taken to the Yeatman Hospital in Sherborne for treatment. But the third airman, the pilot Oberleutnant Hans Zőllner, who had landed some distance away, had evaded capture.

On the afternoon of Sunday 4^th May 1941, two boys from School House, James Evatt (a 37-41) and John Whitfield (a 36-41), were out on a bicycle ride. The boys were probably looking for the site of the plane crash when near to the golf links in the Bristol Road a man wearing flying overalls and the Iron Cross surrendered to them. The man identified himself as Oberleutnant Hans Zőllner. James, who was a School Prefect and Captain of Shooting, was then aged 17 and a member of the Medical Sixth, and John was 18 years old and in the Classical Sixth.

Although boys all over Britain dreamt about what they would do if they met a Nazi on home ground, encountering a German airman at such close proximity must have been a scary experience for James and John. Both boys had been at School the previous year when on 30 September 1940 it was bombed by German aircraft. James Evatt wrote an account of his experiences during the bombing in which he wondered whether the attack was the result of a German reconnaissance plane having spotted an OTC parade in the School Courts the previous week.

Luckily, the boys flagged down a passing car that belonged to Mr Athelstan ‘Dicky’ Trevett (1900-1974), a Lance-Corporal in the Home Guard who had served with the RAF during the First World War and lived at ‘Lona’ in Coldharbour, Sherborne. Mr Trevett, who was returning from visiting the crash site, drove Oberleutnant Hans Zőllner to Sherborne where he handed him over to the police. Later, all three members of the aircrew were handed over to the military authorities.

The ARP Controller gave high praise for the prompt and effective action of all concerned in the capture, saying ‘All the services were quickly on the job, the Home Guard, the police, and the ARP organisation, and in my opinion the whole thing was very efficiently dealt with by all the people responsible for it.’

What stories the boys must have had to tell when they returned to School!

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