The Dangerous Book of Heroes (9 page)

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

While the fighters of A Group fought above Kent, Sussex, and the coast, that was the day that Londoners—and the Luftwaffe pilots—saw 200 Hurricanes and Spitfires together above the city, Leigh-Mallory's “big-wing” from B Group. All squadrons and reserves of A and all squadrons of B were scrambled that day.

Fighter Command shot down and destroyed 60 Nazi aircraft. It lost 26 fighters and 13 pilots. Two days later Hitler postponed indefinitely the invasion of Britain. Later he canceled it completely. Since the end of the 1939–45 war, that September 15 is celebrated every year. It is the Royal Air Force's Battle of Britain Day.

Yet the battle of Britain did not end then. It continued for the rest of the month and into October, gradually reducing in intensity as the Luftwaffe ran out of steam. Bletchley Park had decoded Hitler's Enigma signal of the seventeenth, postponing the invasion, as well as further military signals authorizing the dismantling of invasion air-transport units.

From September 7 to 30, Fighter Command destroyed 380 German aircraft for the loss of 178 fighters. The Luftwaffe's brief aura of invincibility was destroyed forever. By the end of October, Göring was forced to reduce daylight attacks to mere harassing sorties and to direct his bombers to
night raids against Britain. There is a limit to the losses any military force can withstand, and the Luftwaffe had reached its own. The battle of Britain was won.

RAF Fighter Command lost 544 killed. The Luftwaffe lost 2,877: 1,176 bomber crew, 171 fighter pilots, 85 dive-bomber crew, and 1,445 missing in action, assumed killed.

In that autumn of 1940, London was bombed fifty-seven nights in succession, still a record for sustained bombing. Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament were hit. The Blitz continued into 1941, culminating in a 550-bomber raid on May 10. Fighter Command had few effective night fighters at that stage of the war—no air force did, although Dowding's developments were soon to reap benefits with airborne intercept radar in the Bristol Beaufighter. The defense of London and other cities, meanwhile, was maintained by antiaircraft batteries.

The United Kingdom was bombed north, south, east, and west by the Luftwaffe. In particular Bath, Belfast, Birkenhead, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Clydeside, Coventry, Exeter, Glasgow, Hull, Ipswich, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Sunderland, Swansea, and Wolverhampton suffered heavy damage from indiscriminate night-bombing.

Winston Churchill crystallized the importance of victory in the battle of Britain in seventeen words: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

About 75 percent of Fighter Command pilots were commissioned officers and 25 percent were noncommissioned sergeants, although their ranks don't matter: they flew identical airplanes against an enemy who operated a similar system in its air force. Some of their names are legend—Ginger Lacey, Peter Townsend, Josef Frantisek, Al Deere, Douglas Bader, Richard Hillary, Stanford Tuck, Johnnie Johnson, Pat Hughes, Sammy Allard, Adolph “Sailor” Malan, John Kent, J. C. Mungo-Park, “Kill 'em” Gillam, Michael Crossley—while others are proud names on a stone memorial or a part of family history. More than 500 RAF fighter pilots were killed in their tubes of aluminium, but many more were wounded, some crippled, some disfigured terribly
from burns. Those who survived continued flying, through a further four and a half years of world war. There were 791 fewer at the end of that.

The successful and the unsuccessful, the brave and the fearful, Dowding and Park, the pilots, the ground crews, the radar plotters and the observers, the controllers, Beaverbrook, those who flew all the sorties and those who flew only one: they all played their part in the victory over evil.

For if the battle of Britain had been lost and the United Kingdom invaded, Europe would not have been liberated from Nazism. The German death camps would have multiplied, Russia would have been defeated, Japan would have conquered Asia and India, and all the commonwealth and empire countries would have fallen to the Nazis and Japan. As Churchill warned in 1940, a new dark age would have fallen upon the world.

Bless 'em all.

Recommended

The Last Enemy
by Richard Hillary

Leader of the Few: The Authorised Biography of Air Chief Marshal the Lord Dowding
by Basil Collier

Dowding and the Battle of Britain
by Robert Wright

Duel of Eagles: The Struggle for the Skies from the First World War to the Battle of Britain
by Peter Townsend

One of the Few
by John Kent

Film:
Battle of Britain

The Royal Air Force Church, Saint Clement Danes, the Strand, London

The Battle of Britain Memorial, Runnymede, River Thames, U.K.

The Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, Middlesex, U.K.

The surviving inns and pubs in Kent, Sussex, and Essex with pilots' signatures and messages preserved on their ceilings and walls

T
wo of the sons of Henry II would become king after him. Richard I was the older brother. He was a famous warrior and is better known as “the Lion-Hearted.” He fought constantly to retake Jerusalem for Christianity and after becoming king in 1189 spent only seven months of his ten-year rule at home. In his absence, his younger brother, John, ruled as regent. When Richard was captured by the Holy Roman Emperor, John wrote a letter offering to pay £60,000 to have Richard quietly disappear. Instead, the emperor ransomed Richard back to England for £100,000—at that time, more than twice the annual income of the country. Their mother organized the ransom. Churches were ransacked for silver and gold, and rich and poor were taxed for a quarter of everything they owned. When Richard returned home, John begged him for mercy and Richard forgave him, where any other king would have had him beheaded for treason. Richard had unfinished battles in Jerusalem, and he knew there was a good chance he would die there.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

In 1199, when the news came that Richard the Lion-Hearted had been killed in a siege, John had himself crowned king of England. The one danger to his new position was the line of his older brother Geoffrey. Though Geoffrey had died, his young son, Arthur, had a strong claim to the throne. The boy was in France when John became king and was barely twelve years old, but John feared he would one day become a threat. Worse news came when the French king, Philip, decided to support Arthur and made him Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine. Those titles were John's, as they had been his father's before him. In fury, John ordered every shipyard in England to create at least one ship for a fleet. By the end of 1204, he had forty-five heavy galleys, and he is sometimes credited with beginning the domination of the seas that would be the hallmark of British history for the next seven centuries.

As soon as he had the ships, John embarked an army and sailed for France. His one ally was his mother, Eleanor. She doted on John and, when he was forced to return to England for a time, even organized the battles without him. She was outmatched by the French forces and found herself besieged in a castle by Philip's army and the boy Arthur. John returned to France at great speed when he heard the news. He landed in secret and force-marched an army to save his mother. The sudden appearance of his soldiers surprised the French, and they were routed. Arthur became John's prisoner, completely at his mercy. At first John merely demanded that Arthur renounce his claim on the English throne. Arthur refused. We do not know if John killed his nephew personally or merely gave the order, but Arthur was never seen again. There are various records from the period that suggest the boy was either blinded, castrated, or had his throat cut. John was already known as treacherous, cruel, and spoiled. He was ever after known as a murderer.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

While in France, John met a beautiful young noblewoman named Isabella. Lusting after her, he sent armed men to carry her off. He then arranged a divorce from his wife to marry the woman he had kidnapped. The French king demanded that John appear before him to answer for his crimes, but John decided it was too dangerous and stayed at home. As a result, King Philip of France declared the French possessions of the English Crown forfeit. John did not have the army to resist the decision, and all the gains of his father were lost.

In 1205, John quarreled with the pope in Rome. At that time, England was Catholic, but John refused to acknowledge the pope's authority in appointing archbishops. Instead, he sent armed men to drive the priests out of the country. In response, the pope placed England under an interdict in 1208: all religious services were forbidden and all churches closed. Church bells could not be rung, and there were no marriages, christenings, or funerals. The bishops left England together, only one staying. John himself was excommunicated in 1209, which, for the Christian ruler of a Christian country, had serious implications.

Day by day, John made enemies and lost loyal supporters. When one of his lords fled the country, John had the man's wife and children imprisoned and starved to death. The king of France was building an army to invade and remove him, and John had no allies to resist them. He wrote to an Islamic ruler in Spain, offering to become a Muslim and pay annual tribute if the man lent his soldiers. The emir of Cordova refused, saying to the ambassador from John: “Your king is unworthy to be a vassal. He is a coward and a weakling and his infamy stinks in my nostrils.” The fortunes of the English Crown had never been so low.

With an invasion expected at any moment, John decided to grovel to the pope and allow his choice as Archbishop of Canterbury. He hoped this would mean the French king canceled his invasion. Unable to trust even his own men, John sealed himself in Nottingham Castle and waited for the papal legate to arrive. In 1213 he traveled to Dover to meet the legate and heard alarming descriptions from him of the French army massing across the channel.

In terror, John promised to abide by anything the pope wanted and even handed his crown to the papal legate, who handed it back as a master to a servant. John also gave the legate a bag of gold coins as tribute, but the man showed his contempt by scattering the coins with his foot. In all of England's extraordinary history, there has never been such a moment of humiliation as the one John brought about.

News of his appalling actions spread to nobles and commoners alike. Wherever John went in England, he was greeted by hostile crowds, furious with what he had done. Taxes remained cruelly high, and poverty and starvation were widespread. Having lost his French possessions, the king was known as John Lackland, John Softsword, or sometimes simply John the Bastard.

John had one success when one of his lords, the Earl of Salisbury, took the English fleet and destroyed French ships waiting to carry the invasion army. The king of France could not cross without them, and John was safe for a time.

However, he made the situation worse at home when he hired foreign soldiers to take revenge on his enemies in the north of England. They burned and slaughtered freely, and John merely cheered them on. The Archbishop of Canterbury came north to see the king and, in an act of great courage, rebuked John for his actions, reminding him of his coronation oath, when he had sworn to protect his people. John raged at him, telling him to mind his church while leaving the king to mind the country. The archbishop faced him again and threatened to excommunicate him once more. The threat was a potent one, as it had once almost led to his destruction. Reluctantly, John agreed to take council with his barons.

The barons of England did not trust him. They were led by Stephen Langton, a name once famous in British history as a founder of freedom. Rather than accept his promises and see them broken, they began to consider drawing up a charter of rights that they could make him seal in front of witnesses. His great-grandfather, King Henry I, had once created such a document. From it, they would write a great charter—in Latin, a
magna carta.

In 1214 the barons met in secret at Bury Saint Edmunds. At the altar of the church, as the freezing air made plumes of their breath, they swore a holy oath to force the king to accept the charter or begin bloody civil war. There was no mention of a parliament in the document, as the idea did not yet exist, but these men were the first parliament of England. Kings had always had councillors and advisers, but before that date, these aides had no real authority.

That winter was bitterly cold and the country suffered. At Christmas, John met the Council of Barons in Worcester. Despite the driving rain and wind, men gathered around the country, ready to go to war if John refused. Even then John tried to delay the process by offering to let the pope decide the dispute, but the barons knew the cunning king too well. They presented the Magna Carta. He could not read so had a scribe explain the details. As he understood the contents, he raged at them, shouting: “You wish to take away my crown and make a slave of me!” His temper left them unmoved. One by one, the barons walked out and left him to his choice.

The barons had demanded he meet them to seal the document at Runnymede, near Windsor, the date set for June 15, 1215. As the spring turned to summer, his remaining knights left him, until in the whole of his kingdom, he commanded only seven men. His choice was stark: accept the new order, or lose his life and his kingdom.

As the fifteenth dawned, King John came to the meadow by the Thames, where he was met by 25 armed nobles and a much larger number of witnesses and retainers. Those 25 would offer their personal surety that the charter would be observed, but in addition, more than 140 noblemen had taken up arms and declared against the king, Fulk Fitzwarin of the Robin Hood legends among them. They had chosen a place where John could not launch a surprise attack, even if he had been able to find supporters. He was completely in their power, and all his treachery and cunning had brought him to that chill morning, with the cold and misty river running past.

John took his seat by a tented pavilion, with the flags of the barons fluttering around him. The archbishop handed him the Magna Carta, but even then John did not act. He argued long and passionately, and
the barons waited as the evening came, ignoring all his protests. Those twenty-five noblemen had the support of both Prince Llywelyn of Wales and Alexander II of Scotland, as well as eleven bishops, twenty abbots, and the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin. Almost without exception, every man of power in Britain supported the attempt to limit John's powers. The only commoner to offer surety with the barons was William Hardel, the lord mayor of London.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

As servants lit the lamps, John gave up and pressed his royal seal to the charter. In one stroke, he had given away power to elect a council of twenty-five barons. Though neither he nor they were aware of all the implications, they were laying the foundations of constitutional government, an independent judiciary, and trial by jury.

There are sixty-three parts to the astonishingly varied document.
For example, it states that a widow must receive her husband's goods without delay, that only competent men can be appointed as justices and constables, and that a case cannot be brought to court on the word of a single accuser. Also “that men in our kingdom shall have and keep these liberties, rights and concessions…for them and for their heirs, in all things and in all places for ever.”

John went on to break his oath and all the promises he had made. With another mercenary army, he laid waste to the lands of the barons, even burning down the house where he stayed each night in his royal fury. Thousands were killed by his foreign soldiers, and some of the barons sent an appeal to the king of France to enter the country. The French dauphin moved quickly and entered London just a few days after landing. It would fall to John's son Henry III to make peace with the French.

For a time after 1215, it seemed that all the work that had gone into the creation of the Great Charter had been in vain. Although it was confirmed and reissued over the following decade, it would not be until the seventeenth century that it was recognized as the foundation stone of democracy and constitutional liberty.