John Mott was an Evader and Escaper. In the New Year of 1941 Sergeant Mott was piloting a two-engine Armstrong Whitworth Whitley of No 78 Squadron, after attacking the U-boat pens at Lorient on the French Atlantic coast, when he was shot down over Brittany. Baling out of his burning bomber over Lanvallon, Mott was hidden by the Delavignes, a staunchly anti-Boche couple, at their home at Nantes for four months.
During this time he learned sufficient French from Tantine, his hostess, to be accepted as a local; he also assisted Resistance communications with London until he learned that a fellow airman, who knew his whereabouts, was being interrogated by the Gestapo. Fearing the worst, Mott walked into Spain in November and, as he put it, "thumbed a lift home from Gibraltar in an Australian Sunderland flying-boat".
Mott was debriefed and then posted to No 138, later 161, both special duties squadrons designated to SOE. Piloting a Westland Lysander, he began to fly agents and others in and out of occupied France.
On the 28th of May 1942 Mott, by now a flight lieutenant, John was forced to abandon his Lysander, bogged down in a field at Chateauroux, after landing his passenger - a Belgian fighter pilot who, having been shot down and lost an eye, had volunteered to join the MI9 escape line which had helped him back to Britain.
The two men split up, Mott making his way to La Chartre, where he fell into the hands of the French police. It did not help that the town was strongly pro-Vichy. Mott was held in French prisons until he was passed on to Genoa, from where, following the Italian armistice in September 1943, he was put on a train to Austria. After cutting a hole in their cattle truck, Mott and some fellow officers escaped but encountered a band of Yugoslav partisans who mistook them for Germans; Mott was being forced to dig his own grave when a British liaison officer arrived and intervened.
The partisans were attacked by German troops and Mott, anxious to distance himself from the enemy, made his way back to Italy where, in February 1944, he was befriended by a Contessa Cancellucia and provided with forged papers.
In the company of a small group of others who were escaping, which had pooled borrowed money, Mott put to sea aboard a German whaler which he dragged to the water with the help of some cows. Naming the boat Pitch and Toss, Mott and his friends reached advancing Allied troops at Porto San Giorgio, south of Monte Cassino, on March 19 1944.
Half-starved and seasick, Mott landed just as Mount Vesuvius was erupting. The first British officer to welcome and interrogate him was his younger brother Pip, whom he had not seen since 1937.
Arnold John Mott was born on 12th of May 1916, and was educated at Christ's Hospital, it was here that his determination to fly was inspired by the sight of a Zeppelin overhead. He joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1938, and was mobilised on the outbreak of war, remaining in the regular Service until 1959 when he retired and joined the Inland Revenue as a tax inspector.
