The war was becoming personal. RAF fighter pilot Flight Lieutenant Gerry Edge saw the people pushing wheelbarrows and the horse-drawn carts and trucks festooned with children as he flew toward the column on the road. He observed �a Stuka above them, with its rear gunner machine gunning those refugees�. He was incensed, �just hosing them down�:

That was the only time I remember deliberately firing at somebody rather than an object. I thought it might be a trap for me. I looked around carefully and closed in quickly, ready to break if somebody got on my tail. I was not far behind that Stuka when he saw me and started to swing his guns around. I pressed the trigger and he went straight down in flames. I felt a savage delight in killing the two bastards in that plane who’d been murdering the refugees.