Lest We Forget: The Few

[Galant]

I


PRELUDE

Now is this the last stronghold, defended only
By a frail handful of thistledown machines,
And now depends on these strange, unknown young men
Our inmost life.

But surely we have known them,
Our sons, our nephews, friends of our sons and daughters,
Gay and amusing, welcome in our houses
We knew them when the stronghold was their play-ground,
Young men to whom their land had given her plenty . . .
Tea on the airfield lawn, the light bird-chatter
Of young girls dressed like flowers, the casual flip,
Taking a dozen counties in its span,
The sports-car back to town, the cocktail bar,
Dinner, a show, the dancing and the laughter. . .

Till Cinderella's midnight, when the gong
Called for a change of lights, the flower-hues faded,
The bird-chatter was stilled, and they stood out,
Changed to our eyes in the livid glare of danger,
Separate in their blue, strange and unknown.

**********



II

THE FIGHTER-PILOT SPEAKS
(but not aloud)

I am not gone so far away
That, even in my battle-place,
Through rifted cloud I cannot see
Spread dim below me England's face.

The woods that look like clustered weeds,
The chessboard fields, the pin-point spires,
Sun on familiar windows, even
Faint smoke of autumn garden-fires.

Since this I ride is English air,
I have not gone so far away:
From this new world I still can see
The world I knew but yesterday.

And I can see beneath my feet
The paths where not so long ago,
Before the summons came to me,
Your feet and mine were wont to go.

O new-wed wife, I am not far !
Even from the garden that we knew
You yet may see my frozen trail
Looped white across the blue.

**********



III

BATTLE

The time will come when Ocean shall resume
His ancient sovranty upon this isle,
When all our glories shall deep-plunged be
Under a lonely sea,
And wide across this many-peopled room
The waves will roll again, mile on blue mile.

Then, not till then, the tale shall go untold
Of how the cloudy battlements were manned,
How when the gathering thunders rolled
And all the world else stood apart,
We waited, trusting in a little band,
We waited, taut and breathing close,
Till, when those vultures came to peck our heart,
Proud as a flight of swans the fighters rose.

**********

IV

TRIUMPHANT THRENODY*

This was their kingdom, the air, and it bore them like kings,
And they were the shield for us all who dwelt under their wings.


Brief had their lives been until then, nor much longer endured,
But just for so long as the need, till the end was assured,
This they gave up as a ransom, that we might go free,
Richness of days not yet lived, all the fullness to be,
The joy of life's long slow achievement, the race and the prize,
The peace of the ultimate evening, before the light dies.


All this they burnt up in a moment, the young men, the kings,
Who guarded this land in that hour by the might of their wings.


No gift have we now we may give them that weighs what they gave,
But the clouds of our skies shall entwine them the wreath for their grave.

Edward Shanks (1892 – 1953)

A Video Tribute

And then there was this:

A SPITFIRE and Hurricane flew over a home for the elderly to pay tribute to a 97-year-old Battle of Britain hero.

Wing Commander Roger Morewood was "over the moon" as the relics of the Second World War tipped their wings to him over Barlochan House Care Home, Palnackie, in Dumfries and Galloway.

[Zak33]

/Salutes

Pilots... Men, Women and Children on Britain.

tomorrow, the 17th of Sept, marks the day that the Luftwaffe gave the hell up and rolled over, to never come and shadow us again.

Operation Sea lion gave up.

bloody right too....

http://www.military-history.org/arti...n-timeline.htm

that will help understand what GB went through....

[Zak33]

this from mid August

Rather more than a quarter of a year has passed since the new Government came into power in this country. What a cataract of disaster has poured out upon us since then!… Meanwhile, we have not only fortified our hearts but our Island. We have rearmed and rebuilt our armies in a degree which would have been deemed impossible a few months ago.… The whole Island bristles against invaders, from the sea or from the air. …the stronger our Army at home, the larger must the invading expedition be, and the larger the invading expedition, the less difficult will be the task of the Navy in detecting its assembly and in intercepting and destroying it in passage; and the greater also would be the difficulty of feeding and supplying the invaders if ever they landed… Our Navy is far stronger than it was at the beginning of the war. The great flow of new construction set on foot at the outbreak is now beginning to come in......


The great air battle which has been in progress over this Island for the last few weeks has recently attained a high intensity. It is too soon to attempt to assign limits either to its scale or to its duration. We must certainly expect that greater efforts will be made by the enemy than any he has so far put forth.… It is quite plain that Herr Hitler could not admit defeat in his air attack on Great Britain without sustaining most serious injury. If after all his boastings and bloodcurdling threats and lurid accounts trumpeted round the world of the damage he has inflicted, of the vast numbers of our Air Force he has shot down, so he says, with so little loss to himself …if after all this his whole air onslaught were forced after a while tamely to peter out, the Fuhrer’s reputation for veracity of statement might be seriously impugned. We may be sure, therefore, that he will continue as long as he has the strength to do so…