Several weeks ago, I won the weekly drawing at the conclusion of ‘The Big Lick Breakfast Club’ meeting. Our Breakfast Club is an elite organization that requires applicants to have the ability to sign their name annually on the signature line of a $50 check.
The prize was a book entitled ‘The Few’ by Alex Kershaw published in 2006, Da Capo Press. Kershaw also authored ‘The Bedford Boys’ (2003, Da Capo Press), a book about the brave men from Bedford, Virginia and their exploits related to D-Day.
‘The Few’ chronicles the amazing stories of young men who were at once adventurous, courageous, foolhardy, intrepid, dauntless and fearless. That is quite a heady list of adjectives but these skyfighters knew that they could fall from the skies over Great Britain but rise to the triumphal sound of Gabriel’s legendary horn.
Their names were Arthur Gerald Donahue (Minnesota), killed 9/11/1942, William Meade Lindsley Fiske (New York) died 8/17/1940, John Kenneth Haviland (New York), survivor, Vernon Charles Keough (New York) , killed 2/15/1941, Phillip Howard Leckrone (Illinois) killed 1/5/1941, Andrew Mamedoff, (Connecticut) killed 10/8/1941, Hugh William Reilly (Michigan) killed October 17, 1940 and Eugene Quimby Tobin (California) killed 9/7/1941.
Prior to the United States’ entry into WWII, a presidential proclamation deemed it illegal for US citizens to join or be ‘hired’ by foreign ‘warring powers.’ Joining a foreign military organization could cost a person up to a $10,000 fine, jail time and forfeiture of citizenship. Both Tobin and Mamedoff traveling from California realized the risks of traveling to and through Canada before finally arriving in Britain. In the case of Reilly, he was born in Detroit and was just a hop-skip-and-a-jump across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario. He had spent much of his early life in Canada and failed to report that he was a US citizen with a Canadian passport.
World War II commanded the world’s attention in1939 when Hitler’s Nazi war machine started crashing through continental Europe. Although separated by the relatively narrow strait of the English Channel, it was clear that Hitler was intent on sweeping the British Isles into his sinister net of cruel domination. Adolph and his military monsters such as Luftwaffe Commander Herman Goering (The Fat One) settled on a plan to bomb the Brits into oblivion and surrender the population to Nazi serfdom.
The British had lost 435 aviators in the battle to save France. Withdrawing from the skies over France, British pilots and planes were needed to destroy German bombers and accompanying fighter aircraft. With the approval of Lord Beaverbrook, the Eagle Squadrons were established in the RAF on September 19, 1940. The pilots wore the Eagle patch that resembled the eagle on their U.S. passports. All of the Americans gave their lives except Haviland who retired a Distinguished Professor of Aeronautics at The University of Virginia in the 1980’s and died in 2002.
Hitler underestimated his quarry, the stalwart people of Great Britain. The Brits were not like Petain’s Vichy government in France or the Quisling regime of Norway. Another terrible misjudgment made by the Axis powers was the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, bringing the awesome industrial might of the United States into the fray.
What inner force or motivation prompts young men to travel thousands of miles to place their lives at risk to defend the homeland of others? If flying was the ultimate persuasion, their lives were fulfilled in powerful machines such as the Spitfire and the Hurricane British fighter aircraft. These men were heroes to their British hosts and revered throughout the free world for their intrepidity.
The dark clouds of war may be gathering again to test the will of those who treasure freedom. Have faith that there will be valiant warriors who will rise to overcome the threat. Remember the immortal words of Winston Churchill when he said on June 4, 1940, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
Dying for your country is the ultimate sacrifice but dispatching hostile invaders to their destinies ends wars and brings peace.
Dick Baynton
