Jump

The story you are about to read is almost unbelievable, but it is true. It happened one winter's night in 1944, during World War II. Airplanes of the Royal Air Force, after dropping their bombs on Germany, were on their way home.

In each plane, men looked anxiously over their guns into the darkness. This was the time when enemy fighter planes might attack. One of the air-gunners was Nick Alkemade. He was a gunner in the back of the plane and he sat in the rear-gun position, at the very tail of the plane. It was so small that before climbing in, Nick had taken off his parachute and left it in another part of the plane. He felt more comfortable without it. Soon, however, he began to feel very uncomfortable indeed. Suddenly there was a terrible explosion and the whole aircraft shook. The whole of the middle part of the plane burst into flames and Nick heard the captain shout, "We're on fire! Jump!"

At first Nick could not get out of his seat. The tiny door was stuck. After struggling with all his strength for several moments, he forced it open. He looked for his parachute but it was already burning. He had to make a terrible decision: he could stay in the plane and be burnt to death or he could jump without a parachute and be smashed to death, after falling 6,000 metres. He jumped!

The cold air hit him and he could not breathe. At this height the air is too thin to breathe properly. As Nick began to lose consciousness, he thought, "So this is what it's like to die." Then he remembered no more.

When he woke up some time later, he could not believe that he was alive. Slowly he moved his arms, then his legs. They seemed all right. He was lying in a huge pile of snow. When he looked up, he saw a large fir tree. Its branches had broken his fall and the pile of snow had completed his soft landing.

When he got to his feet, he found that his back and one leg hurt but he was able to walk. He made his way to a German farm, and soon he was a prisoner, in a hospital bed. At first the Germans did not believe his story. Later, however, they found the crashed plane and his partly-burnt parachute, with his name and number on it. This was the first time a man had jumped five and a half kilometres without a parachute and still lived!