The BBC today reported that the last surviving Battle of Britain pilot has died. Group Captain John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway was aged 105. He travelled from Ireland to join the RAF on the eve of war and also fought in the Battle of France, in which the RAF desperately tried to hold off the German Blitzkrieg invasion of Britain’s ally.
Winston Churchill famously called the brave RAF pilots the Few:
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few…’
Paddy Hemingway and his fellow fliers saved Britain during the glorious, sunny summer of 1940. The Germans hoped to wipe out the RAF, and so open the way for a seaborne invasion of Great Britain. The RAF’s young pilots won the battle, making the defeat of Nazi Germany possible five long years later.
James Holland brilliantly recreated the immense stress of those Battle of Britain pilots in his 2004 novel, The Burning Blue. He also reminds us how the life of the Battle of Britain crews was so different from that of men serving in the Royal Navy or the armies in North Africa or Italy. The Few lived and died in everyday British communities, fighting in blue skies over the patchwork fields of Kent and Sussex by day, and drinking in traditional English country pubs by night.
The stress must have been overwhelming as the battle progressed, as the RAF noted for Paddy Hemingway:
Continue reading‘Towards the end of the October 1940, the strain of fighting and loss of comrades was beginning to take its toll on Paddy. He was particularly troubled by the loss of his dear friend ‘Dickie’ Lee DSO, DFC in August 1940, saying in later years that his biggest regret was the loss of friends.
Ertblog 