Seventy years ago today 300 German bombers attacked London, killing over 400 people and leaving 1,600 badly injured – nearly all of these were ordinary civilians either in their homes or at their work.

In May 1941 London was bombed in one last massive raid, killing 1,500 people, again mainly civilians – including children, women and old folk.

During those eight months of the Blitz London had been bombed on a daily basis and several other cities had also been attacked at a cost of 43,000 dead and 51,000 seriously injured. Many urban areas had been reduced to rubble.

But after May ’41 the raids petered out. Hitler had received his first setback. His Luftwaffe bombers had caused untold misery, death and destruction – but there had been a price. Many German aircraft had been destroyed, thousands of aircrew killed or injured in what became known as The Battle of Britain.

During those few months the fate of Britain and the free world lay in the hands of a few hundred young men, pilots of Royal Air Force Fighter Command – and in those sunny September days of 1940 the ordinary people of South East England became witnesses of their bravery as they clashed against the enemy over sunlit fields…..

It was Churchill who hammered home the realities of Britain’s desperate situation once France had surrendered. Yet, without trying to cover up the risks, his speeches stiffened the sinews of his countrymen with a message of defiance against the odds – and also recognised the debt we owed to The Few, Churchill’s own description of those young men of the RAF who faced and pushed back the onslaught of what many others had defined as an irresistible force.

Today in quiet ground on the Kentish coast a pilot sits and looks out across the Channel to the coast of France. He is surrounded by the badges of the RAF Squadrons of Fighter Command involved in the Battle of Britain and, nearby, is a wall containing the names of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. This is The National Memorial to The Few.

It is a place for tears and also a place of hope for lessons to be learned – above all a place of thanksgiving for those who paid the highest price to save us from a long night of terror…. 

When you go home, tell them of us and say

For your tomorrow we gave our today