For the Few

I am avidly following the debate in England about whether a statue should be raised to Air Vice Marshall (later Air Marshall) Sir Keith Park in Trafalgar Square on the so-called "fourth plinth" on one of the corners of the Square (the other three have King George IV, Henry Havelock, and Sir Charles Napier, and of course there is Nelson's Column for Lord Horatio Nelson). I was astonished to hear that, for all that he masterminded the winning of the Battle of Britain which was one of the major turning points of the war, there is no public memorial anywhere in Britain (or, so far as I know, none in NZ either). Shame!

I have always been fascinated by stories of "the Few" - probably a legacy from Dad who was also fascinated by this period in our history. One of my earlier memories is watching Reach for the Sky (the Douglas Bader story) and Dam Busters with him and I then devoured every book I could find about the RAF in WWII. Douglas Bader, Keith Park, Guy Gibson, Leonard Cheshire and the rest became my heroes: men who knew that their chances of a long life were small, but kept going out night after night trying to win the war for Britain. Some of the things that they had to do were deplorable, like the firebombing of Cologne; collateral loss of life in the war was awful, and I am a pacifist at heart - but all of that aside, these were heroes. (No less heroines were their wives, families and sweethearts, but those stories are told less often). No doubt this background had a lot to do with me joining the Air Training Corps whilst I was at school!

Lest we Forget - we've forgotten him for long enough!

Pachyderm