FAREWELL TO THE LAST OF "THE FEW"
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” - Winston Churchill, September 1940
The last of “The Few”, John “Paddy” Hemingway, DFC, died peacefully in his home yesterday, aged 105.
He played a key role in the successful defense of Britain against unremitting air raids conducted by the German air force, the Luftwaffe, from July through September 1940 after the fall of France.
Paddy Hemingway - one of "The Few" and a revered figure in British aviation history - played a key role in defending the skies over the United Kingdom against the Nazis in the summer of 1940, when he was just 19. In August 1940, he was twice forced to bail out of his Hurricane fighter plane.
In July 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and in September of that year, he was Mentioned in Dispatches.
He never considered himself a hero and often referred to himself as the “lucky Irishman,” a man simply doing his job, like so many others of his generation. Despite his sacrifice, he would tell stories of the joyous memories he made and moments he shared with his peers, many of whom never returned home.
Mr Hemingway, the RAF said, was a "quiet, composed, thoughtful and mischievous individual" who "embodied the spirit of all those who flew sorties over this green and pleasant land".
And to paraphrase Lincoln, it is for us, the living, to ensure that they did not live in vain.
Thank you, Tom! I read a very good book about the Battle--not by a professional historian, as it happens--in which the author suggested that the decisive nature of it was that it did not decide anything, except that the war would go on. And that was decisive, because it gave time for the Desert War, and the machinations in the Balkans that delayed Hitler's invasion of Russia for a precious few weeks that may have kept the Germans from succeeding on the Steppes. The pilots of Fighter Command really were the few, and we still owe them a debt of immense gratitude.