A beautiful tribute to an amazing man. My parents served under him at RAF Leconfield. It was the 8th anniversary of my dad’s death on 16th March so I can’t ask him about this (and my mum probably won’t remember). I was actually at Leconfield myself as a baby living in married quarters. I was born in Beverley in 1967. My mum had been an air traffic controller prior to her marrying my dad and my dad was an engineer.
Goodness me. He seemed a brilliant character from the obituaries I read, seeming to turn barely a hair at being shot down four times. Long and creditable RAF career under any circs but service in the Battle of Britain and being the last of the Few is the stuff of history books.
In a world of cynical revisionism and cutting heroes down to size, there really wasn’t. These were kids, with a few hours’ training in their aircraft, outnumbered and with no margin for failure. Most probably didn’t feel like heroes - I’d distrust anyone who did - but they absolutely were. Just get on with the job. The line in Zulu, with apologies for the tangential reference, which always chokes me is when Private Cole wails “Why is it us? Why us?”, and Colour Sergeant Bourne says quietly “Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”
A beautiful tribute to an amazing man. My parents served under him at RAF Leconfield. It was the 8th anniversary of my dad’s death on 16th March so I can’t ask him about this (and my mum probably won’t remember). I was actually at Leconfield myself as a baby living in married quarters. I was born in Beverley in 1967. My mum had been an air traffic controller prior to her marrying my dad and my dad was an engineer.
Goodness me. He seemed a brilliant character from the obituaries I read, seeming to turn barely a hair at being shot down four times. Long and creditable RAF career under any circs but service in the Battle of Britain and being the last of the Few is the stuff of history books.
Thank you for this. He was a remarkable man. The was no exaggeration in Churchill’s words of the debt owed.
In a world of cynical revisionism and cutting heroes down to size, there really wasn’t. These were kids, with a few hours’ training in their aircraft, outnumbered and with no margin for failure. Most probably didn’t feel like heroes - I’d distrust anyone who did - but they absolutely were. Just get on with the job. The line in Zulu, with apologies for the tangential reference, which always chokes me is when Private Cole wails “Why is it us? Why us?”, and Colour Sergeant Bourne says quietly “Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”