Honour the Few

By Derek Andrews

Seventy years ago in the skies above Britain, some 2,900 young men repulsed a planned invasion by Hitler which would have seen the nation crushed into submission by the Nazi war machine.

The life expectancy of fighter pilots during the four months of the Battle of Britain, fought in the skies over southern England, was measured in mere days.

Yet the courage of these young men, average age just 21, prevailed.

As Winston Churchill so memorably said of them, "Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed, by so many, to so few".

To this day those brave men are known as the Few.

Thwarted, Hitler commenced the Blitz, constant bombing, most often at night, of London and many major cities.

"London can take it" and "More open than usual" (in a shop window despite the damage sustained to it) showed the stoicism of the British people.

Without the heroism and sacrifice of the Few, and the attitude of the Many, those who perished and those who made it through, the freedoms that we today take for granted would simply not exist.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307165/Battle-Britain-veterans-pride-commemorative-flight-marks-70th-anniversary.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307321/The-hell-beneath-inferno-As-bombs-fell-families-fled-underground-But-life-beneath-streets-squalid-nightmare-wasnt-safe.html

 

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