You will doubtless have read the news and possibly even an obituary of Group Captain John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, the last of ‘the Few’, who died this week at the great age of 105.
That he lived beyond the age of 21 is little short of miraculous, of course – given that he was shot down no fewer than four times in just a fortnight during the Battle of Britain, which claimed the lives of 544 pilots out of nearly 3,000 who fought for Fighter Command.
Without the victory their service and sacrifice brought, it’s highly likely that the outcome of the second world war would have been reversed. Therefore Group Captain Hemingway’s death is a moment of real national significance – up there with the death of the last Tommy, 111-year-old Harry Patch, in 2009 – because he was our last living link with those valiant young men who filled the cockpits of Hurricanes and Spitfires day after day, sortie after sortie, through the summer of 1940.
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