The Brit pilot who hitched hiked out of France after crash landing in 1940

Paul Harris:

Bunny Currant was not a man to give up easily - especially when there was a whole world war going on that needed fighting.

There he was in his RAF uniform, stuck in a field in France, with his Hurricane burning brightly behind him. It was 11am on May 22, 1940.

It was in tackling such setbacks - with utter insouciance, of course - that put the fighter boys of 1940 up with the greatest heroes in our history.

Bunny Currant did not disappoint. Even before crashlanding, after an unfortunate interlude with a Heinkel bomber, he had shown nerves of steel by climbing out of his plane to bale out.

But up there in the clear spring air, at an altitude of 6,000ft, he changed his mind.

Back into the cockpit he climbed, took the controls again, and glided safely down into a freshly-ploughed field.

Then, with the storm of German armour that would culminate in the retreat from Dunkirk gathering pace, the 28-year-old ace fell in with a group of French farmers near Arras who took him, patched him up where he'd bashed his face during the landing, and gave him a meal accompanied by plenty of wine and rum.

After hearty farewells, he scrounged a couple of lifts along the coast before ending up in Calais and hopping aboard a boat home.

At 9pm the next day - still carrying his parachute and nursing a broken nose - he swung open the mess door at RAF Hawkinge in Kent and told his chums he'd quite like a cup of tea...if that was quite all right, chaps.

...

The nine medals of one of the war's most successful fighter pilots were sold to a private British collector for £84,450 at Bonhams in London.

His family sold them with his letters, pilot's licence from 1936, plus 21 years of his RAF logs.

...

The letter, which is reproduced in the story is a mixture of bravado and humility. It is almost a foreign language now, but if you have seen some World War II British films, you will probably recognize the style. The letter to his parents begins, "Heigh ho! Heigh ho! We do get about these days, don't we...?" Not quite William Falkner or Ernest Hemingway but you get the point.