Names on a wall…

20,456.

Just a number.

A fairly big number.

It’s slightly more than the price of a new Ford Mondeo (£18,100). It’s not quite as big as the number of miles around the circumference of the Earth (24,901 miles).

But it’s still a big number. But what is it significant for? Why so important?

It’s the number of names carved onto the walls of the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede, in Surrey. Each of those names is a member of a Commonwealth Air Force who flew or fought in Northern Europe, and who has no know grave. They are the Missing of the Royal Air Forces that took the war to Germany, between 1939 and 1945.

It’s hard to imagine that number of people. It’s the population of a small town. It’s more than the average attendance of a Championship football match. Just imagine. If you went to watch Forest play Birmingham, you’d have been in a crowd of 20,556. All of them gone. Missing. No grave. No tomb. No where to be laid at rest.

It’s staggering. It’s sobering.

Built in the 1950′s it lists 20,456 names. Each name an airman or airwoman. Each name a person without a grave. Each name a person with a story, a life, and a death.

These sorts of numbers are staggering. Hard to get your head around. Difficult to comprehend. And when you visit, and you SHOULD visit, you’ll find a beautiful and calm memorial near to Egham in Surrey, built onto the side of a hill over looking London, just near to the flight path of Heathrow.

And despite the noise of the aircraft taking off and landing at the countries busiest airport, there you’ll find an oasis of calm in a mad and rushed world; a sense of timelessness.  Built like a monastic cloister, with a central tower – reminiscent of an Air Traffic Control tower – there stands panel after panel after panel. Each listed with names. Name after name after name.  I am not going to pick out a name, or a story.  Each is as important as the other, no one stands out. No one should stand out.  Irrespective of rank, gender, role or organisation each should be remembered as one who gave his or her life in the ultimate human folly – war.

And below each panel is a small stone seat.  But often the seat has a picture, or a small posy of flowers, or a candle.  These maybe the names of the missing, but they are not the names of the forgotten.  This is a living memorial.  It is where the people – men and women – flyers and ground crew – of the Commonwealth Air Forces who have no grave are remembered by their families, often by generations who never knew or met them.

It is quite simply a beautiful place and it is a fitting memorial to the Missing.  A journey to pay homage to the men and women listed here is essential for all of us.  We should visit.  We should honour them, and as ever we should all remember them. All 20,456 of them.

Each name a story, each story a life, a death.

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The next blog in this series, coming soon, will be the first hand account of a Bomber Command Veteran Air Gunner. Keep checking back, or even better, subscribe to this blog to get new posts delivered to your email inbox.

Remember them…

70 years ago, Europe was in flames. Total war.

It’s hard to imagine a concept like Total War now. We are used to a different type of warfare, different combattants, different tactics. Assymetric Warfare. Counter Insurgency. Remote, limited conflicts far from our homes.

Then, however, the war was every where.  It was all encompassing.  And everyone was focussed on the goal of winning the struggle – a struggle described as a battle for survival; of good against evil.

It is easy to buy into this, because the regime of the enemy was clearly evil. Based upon a dogma of hate. Terrible acts were perpetrated by some in the name of their ‘Reich’. But it was more than just that. Some of the enemy were not evil. Some were just young men conscripted to fight, who may not have believed in the ideals of the command.

And sometimes the ‘good’ did bad things. Maybe not evil, but certainly questionable things. But are those things only questionable in the light of 20:20 vision of history?

Take the air dimension for instance. In this, thousands…hundreds of thousands…of casualties occurred. And with today’s view, this is un-imaginable. It’s simply almost impossible to comprehend that many casulaties. 65,000 British civilains, 67,000 French, 400,000 Germans – 25,000 in Dresden alone.

We can look at event like Dresden and say that it was wrong, that it was a crime. But that is unfair. It was a different time, and it’s difficult to put yourself in the place of someone who was there at the time. The British had seen London, and other cities like Liverpool and Plymouth, pounded, and of course had seen the center of Coventry destroyed by German bombing raids. If you had been there, would you not have stood up and agreed with Arthur Harris who told the nation that the enemy had ‘sown the wind’ and will now ‘reap the whirlwind’?

Different times, different values.

One thing is certain though. ALL deserve to be remembered. Because by remembering, we see the pointlessness and the waste of war. The deeds done by those who fought were great, even if ideals behind them were not always perfectly noble. But in a time of Total War, everyone fought. And everyone deserves to be remembered and commemorated.

Those on the ground in Dresden are commemorated, likewise in Coventry. But there exists no memorial to the 55,573 members of Bomber Command crews who died, and they deserve to be remembered.

And finally a memorial to those crews is being built in Green Park, in London, and this opens very soon.

It is overdue. Whatever the politics and the ethics of what went on, the fact is that the participants need to be remembered. It is right and fitting that the memorial has been built.

And it is right and fitting that, at last, the crews of Bomber Command who conributed so much to the war effort – and argueably bringing the war to a swifter close – are to be honoured.

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This is the first of a series of Posts scheduled to coincide with the opening of the new Bomber Command memorial. Keep checking back for updates, or better still, sign up as an email subscriber by clicking in the box over on the sidebar on the left of the homepage.

Crosswinds…

The weather recently has been truly terrible for some. Down here in the south of England it’s not been too bad, but in the north of Britain I understand that the storms have been really bad, with very high winds – so high that even a wind turbine exploded because of it and there is a fabulous picture showing an aircraft making a landing where each wheel touched the ground one after another; left wheel, right wheel and then nose wheels…rather than the more standard main gear and then nose gear. It certainly makes for a bumpy landing, AND it certainly takes a lot of skill on the pilots behalf to do.

I saw this sort of landing for myself once, but done by a much smaller aircraft – the Tornado F3 jet. It was back in my days working on 29(F) Squadron and we were undertaking a ‘trail’ back home from a deployment out in America. I was lucky enough to be selected to be on the ‘Trail’ rather than on the main body of transport home.

The trail is the route that the aircraft take to come home, particularly if it is a long journey. It normally consists of an ‘Advance Party’ sent on a Herc C-130 or C-17, the ‘Main’ consisting of the majority of the squadron being deployed and the aircraft themselves, and then a ‘Rear’ or ‘Sweeper’ party following along. Generally the Main Party of ground crew fly straight home in one go and the Advance and Sweeper look after the aircraft on route.

I was on the Advance and we’d flown ahead of the F3′s to arrive and set up a servicing team for when they arrived at each stage of the route home. We’d been in Vegas for 6 weeks (OH! the hardship!) and the trail back was a mission. Vegas to Little Rock in Arkansas for a refuelling stop, Little Rock to Bermuda for an overnighter (It’s a tough life!) and then Bermuda to Larges in the Azores for another overnighter, with the final hop being the Azores back to the UK and the base at Coningsby.

We arrived at Larges airport and found it to be…well…the best way to describe it was as just a massive flat expanse of tarmac. The ‘pan’ was just about the biggest concrete area I had ever seen, with pretty much nothing for what seemed like miles in every direction. It was a bit…desolate. The C-130 had parked itself where it had been directed and we waited for the jets.

It was already breezy.

As the afternoon wore on and we made the preparations for the aircraft to arrive (unloading a few boxes from the pallet on the Herc containing earthing leads for the aircraft, chocks and a few tool kits) the wind slowly picked up. We then received news that not all the aircraft had taken off from Bermuda. One had gone unserviceable there due to an engine fault and was being worked on by the rear party. That would follow along with the Rear Party aircraft (which luckily was capable of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) it as it went along). The rest – 5 aircraft were inbound along with the VC-10 tanker that had done their AAR.

Well, actually given a twist of fate, the VC-10 is actually FASTER than the F3′s were. The VC-10 has a ‘Super-cruise’ that means it can fly faster and higher than an F3 when cruising long distances. It basically meant that it had done it’s job of re-fuelling the smaller jets in flight, and then had left them behind and flown on to the Azores. It landed a good hour before the F3′s were due.

But this itself, had created a problem. The wind that I had talked about had also picked up out in the Atlantic and it was a head wind. It meant that the jets were fighting against the wind and were using more fuel to make progress against it. A LOT of fuel. And it transpired that they were using more fuel than they had thought and that the only place they could make it to with the fuel load they had left was the Azores. They couldn’t divert. Which was now a real problem, as the wind on the ground at Larges airport was now dangerously strong.

And it was a cross wind. The one runway at Larges was roughly at 90 degrees to the direction of the now very strong – almost gale force winds. The storm clouds were gathering, and looking really nasty and menacing, like they were planning to do some serious storming about. We, on the ground, decided to hide inside the Herc. Whilst it wasn’t raining yet, it was clear that within a very short time it was going to rain. A LOT.

People anxiously looked at the sky. And then at their watches. They looked out towards the west to see if there was any sign of the gaggle of jets. Nothing. Then the rain began. A short sharp shower. Thankfully we stayed dry on the ‘Fat Albert’ as it pelted down, and it was just a short shower. A precursor of what was to come.

And then a vehicle turned up. It was the ‘Follow Me’ van that would direct the jets to he parking slots next to us. I asked if I could sit in (I was only a young Junior Technician back in those days) and was told I could have a ride along to bring the jets back. I could also be on hand should there be any problems with the jets between landing and taxiing their parking slot.

With the Portuguese driver and a liaison officer we drove to the end of the runway and awaited the jets. He turned to me and said that the jets had a serious problem. The air traffic control were going to shut the runway! It was considered to be too dangerous for aircraft to land given the stormy conditions and the cross wind.

The only problem was that there was no-where else for the jets still airborne to go to. They were now on the vapours of their fuel tanks and given the Azores location in, pretty much the middle of no-where in the Atlantic, they had no fuel to go anywhere else. ATC couldn’t shut the airfield. The F3′s would simply HAVE to land there. Wind or no wind.

And then there they were. Five small dots on the horizon. Getting slowly larger. They wouldn’t even have enough fuel to fly over the airport and get an idea of the conditions. They would just have to come in and land. Or try to. From my viewpoint at the end of the runway I could see how they were being buffeted by the wind and how the gusts were blowing them off their landing course.

And how the pilots were having to correct for this by flying as much into the wind as they could.

Take a look up from the screen you are reading on for a second. Imagine a straight line along the floor stretching out in front of you. That’s your 12 o’clock. That’s the runway. Stick your hand out and imagine that it’s an aircraft about to land there. Normally the aircraft glides down in the straight line on top of the runway – called a glide-path – and lands on it. An imaginary line coming out of the front of you hand (itself an imaginary aircraft) lines up with the OTHER imaginary line that is the runway.

But the wind was blowing from the side, meaning that the aircraft was being blown by the wind to the side, so the lines no longer match up. To over come this the aircraft flies into the wind to correct for being blown sideways. Still with your hand out in front of you (don’t worry people around WON’T think you are mad in the slightest) imagine that the wind is blowing from your left.

So like the aircraft did, fly your hand into the wind and turn it to the left. Now imagine that the wind is really strong…really, really strong, and you’ll have to turn your hand quite a lot to the left to overcome it.

This is what the aircraft were doing. As well as being blown sideways they were now also descending, AND being hit by gusts of wind and turbulence that also pushed them up and down.

Like on a rollercoaster they flew in and down…crabbing their way through the sky at, from my view point, what looked like about 30-45 degrees to the runway. This was now really dangerous…because this angle was too much for the runway. If they touched the ground at this angle then they runway simply wasn’t wide enough for the aircraft to be able to touch it’s main gear down and then drop the nose and then steer to the right to get back in line with the runway…they’d simply shoot off the side of the narrow strip of tarmac…and crash!

A really. bad. thing.

So as they came down, one at a time, I saw quite simply the very best bit of flying I have ever seen (well, ok second best – that belonged to a Flt Lt Lee Fox who beat up the pan at Cyprus once), but was repeated five times by five different pilots.

Each one came in like the first, crabbing through the air, buffeted and blown and battered by the wind. At what looked to be terrible angle to the runway…but just at the very last minute…hell, last second…the pilot, just as the mail wheels were about to hit the floor slung the aircraft around into line with the runway.

Quickly the nose wheel came down and the aircraft decelerated down the runway to where we were waiting.

Each jet came in and did the same, each one making the best landing possible given the atrocious conditions. I marvelled at them. It must have been a hell of a ride…but not one I would particularly like to have taken. And by the faces of the pilots who, to a man, looked completely wiped out from the experience, not one they wanted to repeat.

You can keep your Red Arrows. Flying into an airport on reserve fuel, into a crosswind, after flying for hours across the Atlantic…and landing into the beginnings of a storm. Those guys were the real deal. For once, as we carried out the servicings of the aircraft as the crews were driven off to find a beer somewhere, I didn’t begrudge them that beer whilst I was still working. They’d bloody deserved it.

Remember…

It’s an odd world we live in.  Events often unfold around us and we find ourselves in situations that are banal, interesting, exciting…sometimes even noteworthy…perhaps momentous.  The stock that we, and indeed our society puts on these events is down to the interest and importance we place in them.  What might be momentous to one…is banal to another.

I have found myself part of the Imperial War Museum’s War Story Exhibit.  When I was on my R&R I was asked by the IWM and the RAF to take part and to be interviewed on camera.  I was at first a bit shocked that I had been asked, and then a bit proud to have been…and then…

…and then I went along to the opening of the exhibition.  Well actually I went along to have a look at the exhibit before the grand opening, to check it out on the quiet, but then that evening I went to the opening event where the great and the good – and me – spoke great words, and I wandered about in pretty much the same bemused way that I did that afternoon.

There I was. Me. In the exhibit.  Me on camera.  People can go up and choose to listen to the words I spoke about things that happened to me in Afghanistan this year.  About what happened when the lad got blown up in the IED blast.  About what it was like to go outside the wire for the first time.  About what I did when I arrived home for my R&R. And they can watch me and listen to me chatter away about these things.

But here’s the thing.  I am there in the Grand Hall of the Imperial War Museum.  Alongside a First World War Tank.  Under a Spitfire.  Next to a Polaris Missile.  There’s a picture of me on the wall there.  On the same wall as a picture of a group of airmen from the 1940′s – dressed in Mae Wests and flying suits, clearly airmen from the Battle of Britain or similar.  There are other pictures and exhibits around the hall.  All things and people that are greater than what I.  Even the other people in the exhibition are greater and better and did more than I did.  They speak of the firefights they were in.  Of the friends they lost.  Of the fear of combat.  I just went to Afghanistan and did some stuff was NEAR to someone getting IED’d, was shot at from a long way away and with ineffective fire – most of projects and work I did didn’t even get finished by the time I left.  And then I had the balls to blather on about it to anyone who would listen.

I am truly humbled to be part of that exhibition.  I am also a bit embarrassed by it too.  Why do I deserve to be there? I don’t.  It’s just because I can’t keep my bloody mouth shut that I am.  Others should be there.  Someone better, someone who did more.  Someone who saved someone else’s life, or found a thousand IEDs, or built something that actually worked out there should be in it. Not a gobby chancer like me.

And then the time of year it is struck me too.  I was lucky to go out there and come home unhurt. I won’t say unscathed by it, because one of the reasons that I haven’t blogged for a while is that I have had a huge writers blog brought on by the fact that I feel guilty about not having done more out there.  I went there and did my best, but, I can’t help feeling that my best wasn’t good enough.  I could have done more.  I went there saying it was a test for me…and I can’t help feeling like I failed that test.  At least I didn’t live up to my  own expectations.

You see others out there – that I knew personally – who were better than me didn’t come home.  I met Dooner and JJ From 1 Rifles out there and instantly was amazed about how brilliant soldiers they were. But they didn’t come home to meet their families again.  Several other guys – including one other, Danny – all brilliant, brilliant soldiers got themselves hurt with life shattering injuries, and me, a daft Raffy who struggled with the heat and the kit and the gear and the going made it through unharmed.

And I am the one in the Exhibition Hall of the Imperial War Museum.  It’s more than bizarre. It’s more than wrong.

My record will be there for a year, their record will be in their families lives forever.  Theirs SHOULD be in the countries lives forever.  They did amazing, brave, heroic and self-sacrificing things.  I did not.

Remember them, and remember every other British and Commonwealth soldier, sailor, airman and marine who has given everything they can for this country.  And remember that for every one of those who died, there are many, many more who are still suffering, either physically scarred by battle, mentally battered by war, or just now aged and infirm and unable to help themselves anymore.

Please remember everyone of them this November 11th (and again on Sunday November 13th). It’s only a few minutes of your time, and if you can maybe a couple of quid into the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal too.  I certainly will be thinking about them and their families this year…and not thinking about much else.

Rankism…

It was an interesting day in work today. I was doing my usual day job, which is pretty dull on the face of it, but does allow me to work with a wide range of people from across the station.  In today’s case I was doing work with the Station Operations Personnel, looking at how they do their Flight Operations stuff. It’s interesting in a way as it is far, far away from my trade of Avionics Technician – but it’s been so long since I actually DID any Avionics Techie-ing I consider my trade title to be Avionics (Retired).

But I digress.  The team I am working with has a wide range of people in it, from Senior Aircraftman (SAC) – which ironically even though it has the word ‘Senior’ in the title is actually quite a lowly rank – all the way through and up to a Squadron Leader.  Indeed at the very start of the ‘event’ we had the direction for the activity set by a Wing Commander, but he left after about 30 minutes of briefings.  The wide range also stretched to having both males and females in the room and a wide age range from the SAC’s in their twenties up to the Sqn Ldr who – and I am guessing was in his early 50′s.

And the way they all worked got me to thinking about rank, and how it works…and how sometimes it doesn’t. About how although rank is necessary and important – hey it’s expected, we are a military force, sometimes it can be a barrier to the way it operates and how it can demotivate personnel.  I know I’ve blogged about this before when it came to calling my old boss by his first name…but this time it was a topic of conversation that took my thoughts in a different direction.

Firstly the Sqn Ldr was very ‘Old School’.  He had a really easy-going manner, but a clinical sharp edge to him. He had a way of standing that was very…well…very much like how a Sqn Ldr should.  He actually reminded me of the way that Richard Attenborough played Roger Bushell in The Great Escape – although the character in the film was named Bartlett. (Watch it, for two reasons; one you can get an idea of how this Sqn Ldr today stood and two it’s a bloody ace film…) I just got a feeling that this Sqn Ldr would be like Bushell. No nonsense, clear, fair, down the line. He was clearly good at his job and was quick to make a decision, but he took prompts from the team and listened to what they had to say first.  He just came across as a ‘good egg’.  The sort of person you’d like to have as a boss.

Unlike the person who was the topic of conversation just a few minutes later.  Clearly there are all sorts in the RAF. Good eggs, indifferent eggs, and bad eggs.  Good leaders, average ones and not so good ones that do somehow seem to have made the grade but then failed to live  up to their potential.  And this one seemed like one that was a person who would NOT be so great to work for.

And it’s odd, because the story I am going to tell is almost exactly the same thing as happened to me about 12 years ago, as happened to one of the SAC’s who was in the room today.

She told us that she was the only SAC in the her particular office – in fact other than her boss, a Flight Lieutenant – she was the only person in the workplace.  And one day the phone rang. She answered it in the usual way we do in the Forces, by saying the name of where she worked, and then gave her rank and name.

Down the other end of the line there was a slight silence…and then an “Oh…” Followed by more silence.

“Can I help you?” said the SAC.

“Well, actually, can I speak to someone senior? Are any of your Grown Ups there?”

And this, quite rightly offended the SAC a bit. You see, it’s just a little bit rude.  It sort of discounts you as a person, as an individual, as a professional at your job.  It basically says – I am far more important that you. I have something very important to say and I want to speak to someone there who is as important as me, and quite frankly I don’t think you are important enough to help me.  You can take it a bit further and say that the person at the other end of the line assumes you are pretty useless just because of your rank. The thing that makes it worse is when the person calling doesn’t ask for a named person. Just a rank. Can I speak to someone else is, at the end of the day, just rude. I know that people can be busy, and that they might have important and urgent things to discuss, but as the saying goes “it’s nice to be important, but it’s just as important to be nice”.  Even in the military…these things are important.  For instance what if one day that SAC finds herself working for that other person…will there be any respect there? Does the senior person deserve any respect? Maybe the RANK deserves respect…but does the person.  By negating an individual just because of his or her rank…well that negates pretty much everything that they do.

And pretty much the same thing happened to me. In fact I have two instances. I was a Junior Technician (ironically a higher rank than an SAC, even though it has Junior in the title!) and there was a vacancy on the Tea Bar committee on the squadron I worked on to be the Treasurer of the Fund.  Not a difficult job, but fairly high-profile, and I was keen to help out, and I was keen to get on by taking on extra “Secondary” duties. I told my boss, who thought it was a good idea, but was then told that “because Jnr Tech Airman is not a Corporal he can’t be a treasurer of a fund.  The rules state that he can’t handle that amount of cash. To do so he needs to be at least a Cpl.” This really hurt me as the sort of cash limits they were talking about was a fund of about £500-£1000 or so, not a great deal, particularly as I had just taken a mortgage out on my house for £50,000. So I could have a mortgage but not run a fund of £1000 just because of WHAT I was not who I was. My bank thought I was a safe bet, but the organisation I worked for didn’t…

The second instance of this Rankism was an almost carbon copy of what happened to the SAC from earlier.  I worked on a Trials and Development team when I was still a Junior Technician and the only other person in work was my newly posted in Sergeant. He had made a quiet entrance into the Bay, but our first impression of him was that he was a fairly good egg. We were right, he was a fantastic chap, and a great leader too. He’d been on the team for about a week and was still pretty much clueless about the equipment simply because he didn’t know the system. And the phone rang. I answered it and got a similar thing said to me as the SAC. “Can I speak to someone senior?” Disgruntled and slightly annoyed I handed the phone to the Sarge who listened to the person speak for a while and then did something that made me love him forever…

“Sir,” he said down the phone, “Can I just stop you there, as I haven’t a clue what you are talking about as I’ve only been here a week. I think you should have a chat to Junior Technician Airman here, he’s been here for two years. He knows the kit better than me” and without listening for a reply he passed the phone over to me…

Just One of The Few…

I am a child of a service family.  I have been in the Royal Air Force for 23 years – it’s the only real job I have ever known – and my brother similarly served for 31 years…My father himself served in the RAF for 22 years and before him HIS father served in the Army in the First World War.  We are service through and through…

But I need to point out that what follows, the man I am going to talk about is no relation to me at all. He shares a family name, but we are no relation whatsoever.  But I found out about this man, because I was interested in my name and to see if anyone with my family name was involved.

Sgt Roy Clement Ford (nickname ‘Henry’) flew with 41 Sqn during the Battle of Britain.  He was just another pilot.  He did nothing spectacular, he was not an ‘Ace’.  His name is one one that springs to mind when you think of the famous pilots.  In fact he was only credited with a ‘probable’ kill of a Bf 109, He came to 41 Sqn in December 1939 after joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1938 doing his flying training at Gravesend and Catterick.

His probable of a Bf109 fighter, was on 5th September 1940 when 41 Sqn, newly arrived in the south, took on a formation of Messerschmitts and Dorniers over the Thames Estuary and two days later on the 7th, after another contact with the enemy Roy, as he returned to Hornchurch made a forced landing in his Spitfire.

But he made it through the Battle of Britain, and given that it was a meritocracy, and that if he was good enough to survive he was good enough to move on, he was commissioned in November 1940.

By 1942 he had moved to Hawker as a Test Pilot and in June 1943 he was posted for a course at the Empire Test Pilots School at RAF Boscombe Down.  He saw the end of the war and was released  from the RAF in 1945, after rising to certainly a Flight Lieutenant and possibly making Squadron Leader.  After two years out, he commissioned again in the RAFVR in 1947, instructing with them at Flight Schools…

He died on November 13th 2002. And that is all I know about him.  All I can find out.

But he was one of the Few, not one of the names that people mention in revered tones, but still one of the Few. As I say, he was credited with just one ‘probable kill’.  But remember the Spitfires and Hurricanes had about 15-20 seconds of bullets per trip…it’s amazing that any enemy aircraft were shot down, and a ‘probable’ just meant that no-one saw it hit the ground or a pilot bail out…but it had been hit and was seen heading down…  And as Geoffrey Wellum himself said, you ‘had to be good otherwise you’d be a gonner’, so anyone who made it through that time must have been, well, one of the best. And to keep going back to that, back into that day after day after day…well, I can’t imagine that bravery.

I’ve waxed lyrical for days about the Battle and about written enough about the men that flew and fought in it…and today is when we should commemorate them, all of them. We should be thankful for what they did, and how they did it. The Few, the pilots, have come to symbolise every man and woman who was involved in any way in the momentous events of July – October 1940.

And Sgt Roy Ford was one of them.  Tonight, as I said on Monday, another Sgt Ford (who share nothing with the earlier one other than a rank, name and being in the same service), will be raising a glass to each and every one of them.

If you are interested, please take a moment to have a look at this page to see if there was someone who shares YOUR name who took part in the Battle. You might know already that you have someone in your family who DID fly or participate in the Battle, if so then please post a comment after this blog.

My last words on the Battle of Britain for now, as I am certain I have written enough about it over the past few days and weeks come from a poem called ‘Prospice’ quoted by (my greatest hero) Sir Ernest Shackleton. I think that Robert Browning’s words are a fitting way for me to end my series of blogs about the Battle of Britain. They are more apt and sum up the battle in a better way than I ever could.

“For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave”.

The Night Before…

Tomorrow is Battle of Britain Day.

I’ve taken a bit of prose and tweaked the words a little. I don’t think it’s stayed in Iambic Pentameter but I think the sentiment of this text created hundreds of years ago for a battle that was even earlier fits that of the battle 70 years ago…so, with my excuses and apologies to William…

It is the night of the 14^th September 1940. Air Vice Marshall Keith Park, Air Officer Commanding 11 Group, is visiting his bosses office at RAF Bentley Priory. He walks into Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh ‘Stuffy’ Dowdings office, salutes and presents the intelligence report for the next days operations. It is not good news. It suggests the Germans Luftwaffe will send across several massive waves of fighters and bombers.

PARK
Oh, I wish we had a few more fighters and pilots for the morning.
I fear that the Germans will hit us hard.
There are so many people doing nothing, and so few of our fighter boys.

DOWDING
What’s that, that you are wishing for?
No, my dear Park.
If they are marked to die, there are enough of them
To be a loss to our country. And if they live,
Well, the fewer men, the greater the share of honour.
Goodness me, man! Please! Don’t wish for one more man.
I don’t care for money or fame. I don’t care if people wish bad things on me,
And feed on my bones when I am gone.
I don’t care who wears my uniform!
All these things don’t figure in my dreams.
But if it is a sin to desire honour,
Well I am the biggest sinner alive.
No, have faith my dear Park,
Don’t wish for another man in our aircraft.
God! I would not lose so great an honour as one more man.
NO! Send out a signal to all my Fighter-Boys,
That he who doesn’t have stomach for the fight tomorrow,
Well he’s stood down on leave. He can go without a problem.
I’ll even pay for his trainfare.
We won’t fight in a man’s company
Who fears his life to die for us.
Tomorrow will be called The Battle of Britain Day
And he that outlives that day, and comes home safe,
Will stand tall, and square his shoulders, when the 15th is mentioned!
He that shall live out tomorrow, and see old age,
Will yearly on the night before that day
Share a beer with his family and friends and say,
‘Tomorrow is Battle of Britain Day.’
And he will strip back his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘THESE wounds I got on Battle of Britain Day.’
Old men forget things: and younger ones don’t learn,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day!
Then our names, familiar in his mind
As household words, Dowding, Park, Leigh-Mallory
Bader, Lane, Lacey and Unwin,
In their pints glasses and their toasts be newly recalled.
This story the good man shall teach to his son;
And Battle of Britain Day shall never go by,
From this tomorrow until the end of the world,
Without all of us being remembered.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he that flies and sheds his blood for me
Shall be my brother, whoever he is.
This day will make a gentleman of him,
And men in Britain now asleep
Shall think themselves cursed because they weren’t there,
Flying in machines of power and beauty
And they’ll hold their manhood cheap, and be ashamed,
When anyone who speaks, that fought on this
Battle of Britain Day.

(Original text from Henry V, Act 4, Scene III, William Shakespear. He could write that, lad…)

Battle of Britain Day…

This Wednesday – 15^th September – marks the 70^th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain. This date was chosen as it was the day that massive German attacks on London were broken up by dogged and determined defence by the Royal Air Force’s Spitfire and Hurricanes. So much so that the German Luftwaffe received their highest losses in one day (185 enemy aircraft were claimed by the RAF) and thus forced a major tactical rethink by the Germans.

In essence it showed that their plan to defeat the RAF was not going to work. They had already switched to massive bombing of London instead of focussing on the RAF itself, and the losses received on the 15^th showed that the RAF was not beaten. It wouldn’t be beaten, and was capable of inflicting major losses against the attackers. It made Goering do a serious re-think, and by the 17^th September the potential invasion of Great Britain was cancelled indefinitely.

The Luftwaffe limited itself to fighter-sweeps across southern-England, and to large scale night-time bombing of British cities. The Battle would continue, rumbling away, for another month, and the bombing would last into 1941, but the major part of the Battle was won.

The RAF had beaten off the threat of destruction. And this threat wasn’t just the destruction of itself. The threat was, as Churchill himself stated, against civilisation. It was a threat against the British way of life and, potentially the way of life of freedom loving people all over the world.

Despite revisionist authors, it is still clear that the RAF had to be defeated before there could be any chance of a German victory in the Second World War. Whilst I don’t think that the tide of the war changed in the Battle of Britain – that happened when the Germans unleashed the whirlwind of the Russians by invading in 1941 – it was certainly slowed. If the Nazis had been able to defeat the RAF, the potential to defeat Britain was far greater, and so if we had been knocked out of the war…and they had been able to concentrate totally on the invasion of Russian…if…

But that never happened. The Few of the RAF stood in their way. Britain stood proud and some 2927 young British, Commonwealth and Foreign Volunteers stopped them. Much has been written by far more eloquent people than I to eulogise these Few. And I am without words to be able to match those words. I am in awe. I am beyond words in gratitude to each and every one of those men.

Equally, I am in awe of the Ground-Crews, the engineers, fitters, armourers, drivers, clerks, cooks, plotters, spotters and firemen. These ‘Many’ were the men and women who were the backbone of the RAF. They were the ones who repaired the aircraft, fed the crews, administered them, protected the airfields, drove the fuel trucks, and plotted the battles on the tables in the HQs. All these men and women who, despite being called Airmen and Air Women, stayed firmly on the ground. But without these Many the Few would not be able to have got off the ground. They are often forgotten, but for me, anyone who had any role to do with the defence of Great Britain at that time, becomes part of the Few. Be, they ne’er so vile. They were part of the Few.

I am a great believer in the fact that people are just ordinary. People are the same the world over. They have the same fears, dreams, hopes, desires. They basically want a happy life. They want to get on with things. But the Battle of Britain was an extra-ordinary thing at an extra-ordinary time. And the participants in it were mostly just normal, ordinary, young men. There were a few notably great men, names that trip of the tongue like Dowding, Park and Leigh-Mallory who led Figher Command and the frontline groups, and othes like Glowaki, Lane, Lacey, Unwin, Tuck, and Sinclair, who flew and fought in the air.

But mostly the Battle of Britain was ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things. And it is this that sobers me. Meeting veterans of the battle is sobering. These ordinary young men were changed forever by the events they were caught up in. Tomorrow night ‘First Light’ – the story of Geoffery Wellum is shown on TV and you’ll be able to see just how young mens lives were changed by what they did.

And what extra-ordinary things they did. Flying, fighting. Defending their country. Their way of life. Our way of life. And it makes me proud to be part of something which has that as part of it’s tradition. I wear the same uniform as those fighter-boys. I wear the same badges. I wear the same colour shirts, put on a similar tie. Polish similar shoes. Again, my words fail me for how proud this makes me feel. A deep pride to be part of something that…that big.

So this Wednesday evening I will be commemorating the battle, with a pint of Spitfire beer. I’ll raise a glass to those 2927 who have come to symbolise the battle and participated wearing the same uniform as I, and then I’ll raise another glass to the 544 who lost their lives during the Battle (and then another 791 who survived the Battle, but not the war).

And I’ll do it with pride. I urge you to do the same.

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You can help out too. The Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund (RAFBF) is organising a ‘Day of Action’ for Wednesday 15^th September. You can show your support by visiting this page and having a go at following some of the things to do there http://www.1940chronicle.com/day-of-action/ I’ll be playing my part – but you could add a Twibbon to your Twitter avatar, or even change your photo to one of the RAFBF’s 1940 characters. What else I will be doing on Sept 15^th to mark the day? You’ll have to follow me on Twitter and wait til Wednesday to find out…

First Light…

Cripes, I am a lucky Airman.

I managed to get a ticket to see the Premiere of the film ‘First Light’ last night.

This tells the story of Geoffrey ‘Boy’ Wellum, who at just 18 and 9 months found himself posted to 92 Sqn (and given to the care of the legendary Brian Kingcome) to fly Spitfires, arriving just at the on set of the Battle of Britain in 1940.

It was superb. It IS superb. It is emotional, evocative, thought-provoking and sobering.  It concentrates on the human stories of the conflict, and looks at the personal toll that flying and fighting in that heady summer took on the participants.

It reminds us most of all that even though the fight over the south of England back then was fought high in the sky, in machines where the combatants could hardly see each other, it was still fought by young men.  Some of whom were just out of school. 

The story abridges the book of the same name – which is a fantastic read in itself – and looks at how the conflict shaped Geoff, turning him from a boy into a man, and building up, in some way, the stresses that led to his complete nervous breakdown in 1943…And it does it in a sensitive way with cutaways and voice-overs from Geoffrey himself, describing how the Battle defined him, and will always define him.  The drama/documentary style is far more over to the drama side, but the cut-aways from seeing a dashing young actor jumping into a Spitfire cockpit to seeing an 89 year old man behind the wheel of a car is powerful in itself.

The terror and the fear of the experience is laid bare – we see Geoffrey lost in cloud downing an enemy aircraft almost by accident – after being selected for a sortie in appalling weather that no-one in the dispersal hut wants to think about doing…and it does a fantastic job at stripping just a tiny bit of the mystique away from the pilots. They were…still are…just men. 

Yes, they are special men, but they had the same emotions as the rest of us. Fear, rage, anger, despair, love, pride… They were just ordinary men. But doing extra-ordinary things. Being pushed to the limit, to breaking point and sometimes beyond it. Flying, fighting, dying. And when they did die, men’s names were just wiped off a blackboard in an almost callous way.

But it’s the coping mechanism that they had to use to get them through. Time to grieve for fallen colleagues is nonexistent, they must continue; to think about the death of others might mean thinking about their own possible death.  It is a horrifying thought. To be reminded of your own mortality every time you go to do you job, to do your duty. It’s faced people who have taken part in war all through time, of course, and it still does, but here we see a war where people simply disappear. They take off, they fly, they fight and they just don’t return.

Geoffrey’s story – and that of the rest of the Few – is defined by the time and the Battle. It makes him and the film is a powerful tool to remind us of all the things that these Few men went through to secure our country at that time. The applause at the end of the film was warm and strong, but was nothing until the director of the film stood and persuaded Geoffrey himself to stand also. Then the applause wasn’t for the film.  It wasn’t for the story. The standing ovation that Geoffrey received was for himself, and for what he did. What his friends did.

And I was struck by this even more as I walked out of the venue, and across Waterloo Bridge in London, last night. I stood for a second and looked around me, over on the right was the Palace of Westminster, to my right the massive dome of St Paul’s. It was a lovely clear, warm night. London at its most beautiful. And I thought of the old man I had left behind in the reception, sipping a Spitfire beer. He, and his contemporaries had made this so.  They had fought and flow and made their sacrifice – be it their lives, their sanity or even their innocence – to allow me to stand there.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have been a pilot in the Battle of Britain, but the film First Light, gives me a bloody good idea of it.

(Can I just say thank you to Yvonne over at the RAF Benevolent Fund who helped me out with the tickets. I am honoured to have been there last night.

I understand that First Light will be shown on BBC 2 on the 14^th September. I urge you strongly to watch it. More than urge…it’s an order…)

What If…? A Nightmare Scenario for the Battle of Britain…

Back in 1940, last night an event happened that has been identified as one of the major events of the Second World War.  81 twin engined bombers from the Royal Air Force flew to Berlin in a revenge attack for 10 German bombers dropping their bombs on London.

This was a major embarrassment for Göring who had earlier said, “If ever bombs fall on Berlin, you can call me Maier” (which is a German term for something that is impossible)…and so he had to respond. And respond he did.

 For so far during the Battle of Britain the German Airforce – the Luftwaffe – had been pounding the Royal Air Force, and whilst in the air the RAF was giving as good as it got, it was on the ground that it was struggling. The bases where they flew from were however suffering.  Many RAF squadrons had been dispersed to remote grass strips, often taking off from flying clubs and small aerodromes simply because their parent airfields had been to great a target for the Luftwaffe’s bombers. But because of the raid of the 25^th August, the Luftwaffe was ordered to shift it’s priority for targets. 

And that major target now became London and other population centres.  The RAF was given time to breathe and regroup.  It was Hitler and Göring’s biggest mistake in the Battle of Britain. It effectively lost them the battle, for the RAF was able to come back against the enemy and eventually cause enough losses to the Germans to limit daylight operations and go over to the night time bombing that would last for the next few months – the Blitz of London.

And this got me to thinking. This was a major turning point.  The RAF and Britain had dark days to follow that, but it was the shift that changed the battle. But did it change the war? Was it the moment of departure?

And it got me to thinking. What if…? What if Göring had explained to Hitler that he was winning the battle and that in just a few days the RAF would be beaten in the south of England.  If he had kept bombing and hitting the RAF, what could have happened.

And here is my ‘What If…?’ 

The Germans continue pounding the RAF, so much so that in just a few days the RAF’s ability to operate from the ground south of the Thames is untenable.  Dowding, the leader of Fighter Command, much against Churchill’s wishes has to pull back No 11 Group to north of London. They can still operate fighter sweeps, but the ability to respond to Luftwaffe attacks it greatly diminished. More importantly this gives the control of the air over the English Channel to the Germans, forcing the Royal Navy out to operate, to support British shipping. Britain was a trading nation and needed 55 million tons of imports a year to survive, and so the control of the sea and ports was vital. However with this lost and with the RN forced to operate without air cover, the German Stuka dive-bomber that had been mauled by the RAF were now able to fly without fear again. These turned their attention against the British Navy destroying many ships. 

The American Ambassador, Joe Kennedy, who had earlier said that the British government was likely to fall, re-iterated this point of view, saying that Churchill’s government was losing popularity and that it had less than six weeks left in it.  This was re-inforced by two things. Firstly the Luftwaffe bombed the Bristol docks, and also hit the population centre of the city there as well. Hitler promised the British that he would level the British towns and cities one after another unless they surrendered.  Churchill gave another of his brave speeches talking about the British spirit of defiance triumphing against the odds, but his position was weak as the Italians had attacked the British forces in the Horn of Africa. Here, they were forced back, and the Italians entered Egypt, aiming to sever the Suez Canal.

The Americans were worried by the British position, worried enough to send troops to occupy Iceland to protect their northern flank against aggression. They then annexed Bermuda and sent their Marine Corps into the Caribbean to occupy British colonies and protectorates there.

This was the last straw for Churchill and his position became untenable. With the prospect of London being hit in a similar way to Bristol and food shortages already starting to bite he had to go.  His replacement, the only one in the War Cabinet with any level of authority who was not directly associated with Churchill was Lord Halifax.  He immediately made approaches to the Germans for a cease fire.  His negotiating position was that in return for no German occupation he would limit the size of the British Army, disband the RAF and hand over the bulk of the Royal Navy to the Germans.  The British Army would be a defence force only – roughly the same size of the German army after the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles, and would not be capable of any offensive operations. 

Hitler gratefully accepted this position, allowing the British some semblance of pride and more importantly no occupation forces.  He wanted his troops to be available for his next and greatest prize – the ideological destruction of the Russia.  With the British governments collapse in support of the Italian campaign in North Africa German troops land and sweep through into Palestine and Trans-Jordan.  Rommel and Heize Guderian take Panzers into Iraq and secure the oil-fields.  Meanwhile other German forces occupy the Balkans and pause before they launch into the 1941 operation of the invasion of the Soviet Union.  Operation Barbarossa is launched in May 1941 and makes the massive inroads into Russia. But instead of the three army groups that attack in the real events of WW2, there is a fourth army group led by Guderian who strikes up from Iraq into the Caucasus aiming due north for Moscow. By October the German advance into the hinterland of Russia was well made and the Caucasus army group of Guderian had cut off a huge amount of supplied that the Russians had tried to send to fight the main front in the west.  Stalin sat in the Kremlin and considered his position, but late November the Germans were outside Moscow and Stalin knew he had to leave.  He retreated his government to behind the Ural mountains, and attempted to re-group his army to counter attack in the Russian winter. However the Germans had by now captured Moscow and dug in for the winter.

The offensive by the Russians was weak and the German army repelled it, forcing the effective defeat of the Red Army.  The Urals became the de-facto border of the German Empire with a long slow guerrilla war underway in the vast spaces of Siberia.

The defeat of the Red Army meant that Hitler’s position at the top of Europe was impossible to match and his antecedence was complete. The world 70 years later would look a lot different…

And this was, in my mind all down to the ability of the RAF to defeat the Germans in the Battle of Britain.  The Few of the RAF fought and defended not only Britain, but also western civilisation as we know it…for Churchill’s own words would have come true…if they had failed… “then the whole world…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” 

It is my conjecture that if the Germans had beaten the Royal Air Force in 1940 – as it was so close to doing – then the British government would have fallen; the course of the war, and of history would have been much, much different…

But over to you, what do YOU think?