Military service of Ian Smith

Smith with No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, c. 1943

Smith hoped to be posted to Britain at the end of his training,[14] and was initially told that this was going to happen, but he was instead sent to the Middle East.[16] He was despatched to Idku, a small RAF base near Cairo, in late 1942,[13] from where he was posted to an operational training unit based at Baalbek in Lebanon. He spent six weeks there, flying over much of the Levant in a Hawker Hurricane fighter, before being posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron to begin active service, again piloting Hurricanes. The squadron was stationed near the Iranian capital of Tehran when Smith joined it, but it almost immediately transferred to Kirkuk in Iraq, to help guard the oil wells and pipelines there.[17] In March 1943, it was again committed to the Western Desert campaign in North Africa, having previously served there during 1941–1942,[10] and Smith served on this front as a Hurricane pilot.[17] He was promoted to flying officer on 25 March 1943.[18]

On 4 October 1943, Smith took off from Idku at dawn in a Hurricane Mk IIC to escort a shipping convoy.[13] Light was extremely poor, and Smith's throttle malfunctioned;[19] he failed to take off quickly enough to clear a blast wall at the end of the runway. The undercarriage of the aircraft scraped against some sandbags on the wall, causing Smith to lose control of the plane and crash.[13] The shoulder straps on his harness, built to withstand stress of up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb), snapped,[19] and his face was smashed against the Hurricane's gyrosight. Smith suffered serious facial injuries, and broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder.[17] Doctors thought at first that his back had also been broken, but it had only been buckled.[14]

A team of doctors and surgeons at the Fifteenth Scottish Hospital in Cairo worked extensively on Smith, putting his jaw back together with a complicated assembly of bandage, plaster, nuts, bolts and wire, and rebuilt his face through skin grafts and other reconstructive surgery.[20] In March 1944, after about five months' convalescence, he was passed fit for flying.[14] He turned down the offer of a posting home to Southern Rhodesia as an instructor and, after a refresher course in Egypt,[20][21] travelled to Corsica to rejoin No. 237 Squadron, which was by now flying Spitfire Mk IXs.[21]

A Spitfire Mk IX, as flown by Smith in Italy during 1944

Smith joined No. 237 Squadron in Corsica on 10 May 1944, and resumed operational flying two days later.[13] He was promoted in the field to flight lieutenant. [lower-alpha 4] The unit was attached to an American bomber group, and assigned to cover it during attacks on northern Italian cities. The fighters also embarked on strafing raids in the Po Valley against railway traffic and heavy vehicles.[20] Smith flew 10 sorties and on the last of these, on 22 June,[13] led a strafing raid against a large railway yard when his aircraft was hit by flak on a second pass. He warned other pilots not to attempt a second pass on the railway yard, and turned towards the coast, hoping to ditch in the sea.[23] Smith's wingman, Alan Douglas, told him by radio that black smoke was coming from the aircraft, then that the engine was ablaze.[24] Smith bailed out. He had never parachuted before. He turned his Spitfire upside down, thrust the stick forward, released the cockpit's canopy, fell out of the plane and landed without serious injuries on the side of a mountain.[25]

According to his own account, he initially hid in a large bush, but decided this was too obvious, and so moved to a smaller one. A German patrol arrived, examined the original bush, and attacked it with bursts of automatic gunfire before leaving. "Somebody was keeping an eye on me when I thought I'd better get out of that bush ..." he later told Phillippa Berlyn.[25] The area in which he had landed was predominantly anti-German, and largely under the control of pro-Allied Italian partisans; one of these saw Smith's descent and retrieved his parachute to stop the Germans from finding it.[25] Smith hid for a while longer before emerging to greet a boy of about 12. The boy, Leo, knew no English; using sign language, he told Smith to sit and wait, and shortly returned with his elder brother, Lorenzo.[26] Lorenzo proposed that Smith come to their home to eat, and Smith accepted. The boys' parents, peasant farmers named Zunino, took him in, but decided it was too risky to keep him at the house so soon after the crash, and hid him in a cave on the mountain. The next day, the Germans came to the Zuninos' house, looking for Smith. After about a week, the danger had subsided, and the Zuninos gave Smith a room in the house.[27]

Smith worked on the Zuninos' farm and began studying the Italian language, which he realised he had to learn if he was to travel through enemy territory to the Allied lines.[28] After a month, the local partisan commander, Antonio Bozzano (nicknamed "Barbetta" because of his beard), came to meet Smith, and asked him to join his ranks. Smith accompanied Barbetta to his headquarters, about 10 miles (16 km) away in a village called Piancastagna. When Barbetta asked his rank, Smith said he was a captain. "Oh well," Barbetta replied, tapping him on the shoulder; "you are now a major. I make you a major."[29] Smith realised that Barbetta had given him this "promotion" in the hope of elevating his own reputation in the resistance movement—"none of the other regiments in the area could boast an Inglesi pilote and a majore to boot", he explained in his memoirs.[30] Smith got on well with Barbetta, and took part in sabotage operations for about three months during late 1944. Meanwhile, he became proficient in Italian.[29] After the Germans pulled out of their local garrison at Sassello in October 1944, Smith told Barbetta that he was going to attempt to return to the Allied lines.[31] The partisans tried to talk him out of it, telling him it was too risky, but when Smith insisted, they gave him letters to take with him, endorsing him to other Italian partisan groups he might encounter on his way. A British Army corporal known to Smith as "Bill", who had been hiding in a nearby village, asked if he could come as well, and Smith agreed.[32]

Sassello

Downed behind German lines in northern Italy, near Sassello, Smith spent three months fighting with local partisans, then headed west, hoping to meet Allied troops in southern France

Smith headed west, across the Ligurian Alps, towards southern France, which he knew had just been invaded by Allied troops, principally Americans, Free French and British. He and Bill were assisted along the way by Italian partisan groups and other locals. After 10 days on the road, three other Allied personnel—a Frenchman, an Austrian and a Pole—joined the trek, having met Smith and Bill at a partisan camp. The lingua franca of the group having changed to Italian, the five men hiked to the border, where they were taken in by an old farmer, Jean Batiste Chambrin, who gave them instructions on how to pass the German sentries guarding the border with France. The soldiers decided that because it would be too risky to try to cross all together, Smith and Bill would go first, with the Frenchman, Austrian and Pole following the next day.[33]

Chambrin did not speak English, but summoned his English-speaking brother.[33] Smith produced his RAF rank insignia as proof of his identity.[33] Smith and Bill made their way to the border crossing, guided by Chambrin, who told them that his brother would meet them on the other side of the border. The only crossing was a bridge, manned by German sentries. Smith observed the checkpoint for a while, and saw that pedestrians crossing alone or in pairs were rarely challenged, while larger groups often were. He thought it might be possible simply to walk across, and told Bill to "just look straight ahead and walk quietly on".[34] They were not challenged, and met Chambrin's brother a few miles away. The Austrian and Frenchman joined them the next day; the Polish soldier, who had appeared to Smith to be underage, had lost his nerve on seeing the Germans and had gone back.[34]

Having crossed into France, they sought friendly troops. They decided to bypass the German positions by crossing the Maritime Alps, with a local guide, over the course of two days. They lacked equipment and clothing for mountaineering. During the night, Smith took off his shoes, and found in the morning that they had frozen and that he could not put them on. He continued in his socks, which wore through, forcing him to finish the journey walking barefoot on the ice and snow.[35] Twenty-three days after Smith and Bill set off from Piancastagna, they met American troops who took them to a local base camp, from where they were returned to their respective forces. The Americans took Smith to Marseille, from where he was flown to the RAF transit camp at Naples. On arriving in late November 1944, Smith sent a brief telegram home to Selukwe: "Alive and well. Love to you all—Ian."[35]

It was well known to British servicemen that spending three months or more missing behind enemy lines resulted in an automatic posting back home, which Smith did not want; he was therefore wary as he entered his interview at the Naples transit base. When passage back to Rhodesia via Egypt was offered, Smith successfully requested permission to go to Britain instead, saying that he had many relatives there and considered it a second home. In England he was posted to a six-week refresher course in Shropshire, flying Spitfires.[36] Smith performed very strongly in the exercises and, at his own request, was posted back to active service after only three weeks in the course.[35] He was attached to No. 130 (Punjab) Squadron, part of No. 125 Wing, which was commanded by Group Captain (later Air Vice Marshal) Johnnie Johnson, one of the most successful RAF flying aces of the war.[36] Reporting for duty with No. 130 Squadron at Celle, in western Germany, on 23 April 1945,[13] he flew combat missions there, "[having] a little bit of fun shooting up odd things", he recalled,[37] until the European war ended on 7 May with Germany's surrender.[37]

Smith remained with No. 130 Squadron for the rest of his service, flying with it to Copenhagen, and then, via Britain, to Norway.[lower-alpha 5] He spent around five months in Norway as part of the post-war occupation forces, but did not learn Norwegian, later telling Berlyn that it seemed much harder to him than Italian, "and they all spoke English, you see".[37] After No. 130 Squadron returned to Britain in November 1945, Smith was demobilised and sent home. He was met at RAF Kumalo in Bulawayo by his family, with whom he drove back to Selukwe.[38] Journalist R. W. Johnson wrote that Smith's war service was "undoubtedly the central experience of his life".[39]