severe dressing-down I’d ever seen an adult
receive, that I considered the possibility
that my mom had been right to worry.
That incident came to mind again a few
weeks ago, when a friend sent me a couple
of stories written by a retired Australian air
force and airline pilot named John Laming
who had firsthand memories of the Battle of
Britain…from the same perspective I had as
a kid on that boat. John Laming’s mom died
of TB in 1939, and his father joined the
British army to fight the Germans. So at the
age of 7, John was sent to live with an uncle
in a village in Kent, which John tellingly
describes as “one hour’s bus drive from the
invasion coastline, and twenty minutes’
flight time in a Heinkel bomber from
German occupied France.”
Kent was, in fact, directly in the path of
the German planes as they made their daily
bombing runs on London. And if John
remembers so much from the battle, it’s
because every moment he wasn’t in school,
he was, he says, “on Blue Bell Hill watching
the dog fights between the Spitfires and
Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force and the
Messerschmitts, Heinkels and Dorniers of
the German Luftwaffe.”
Most aviation battle tales are written by
the combatants themselves. But John’s
vignettes offer a glimpse of the battle
through the eyes of an 8-year-old who still
had the innocence and good fortune to see
the combat taking place directly overhead
as more of an exciting adventure than some-
thing to be feared.
One Sunday morning during the early
days of 1940, I was press ganged into singing
in the local church choir. The air raid siren
sounded just as the choir and congregation
launched into the old favourite “Onward,
Christian Soldiers.” The siren warning was a
One of John Laming’s favorite comic books included
stories about Flight Lieutenant Rockfist Rogan, RAF ,
a hero to many a young would-be pilot.
“Breakfast in New York, Lunch in Chicago, Dinner in Denver”
Cavernous 49” Cabin
Tremendous Visibility
L
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