Britain

Forgetting “The Few”

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Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few

–Winston Churchill, referring to the fighter pilots who fought and won the Battle of Britain

The British publication News of the World recently sponsored a reunion of Battle of Britain pilots. (via Newmark’s Door) Searching for links on this story, I ran across a September 2000 item in The Independent:

An ICM poll to mark the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain found that some were not even sure that Britain was fighting the Germans, saying instead that they thought the enemy was the Romans or Normans – while 10 per cent thought the French were the foe. Some people were also confused as to whether their wartime leader was Winston Churchill or King Alfred.

For the survey, 1,000 people were asked four questions about the Battle of Britain – but fewer than half of those aged between 18 and 24 knew it was an air battle.

I doubt if the general level of knowledge has improved much in the last 10 years.

C S Lewis observed (I’m quoting very loosely here) that if you want to destroy an infantry unit, you cut it off from its adjacent units..and if you want to destroy a generation, you cut it off from previous generations. Such cutting-off seems to be proceeding, on both sides of the Atlantic, at a rapid pace.

Nothing much to report

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It says something about the boringness of what feels like the longest election campaign in British history that this morning’s news of the light airplane crash that injured Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP and now parliamentary candidate in Buckingham, standing against Mr Speaker Bercow, was its only interesting item. Apparently, both Mr Farage and the pilot are doing well in two separate hospitals, so the news is not as tragic as it could have been. Apart from that, there really is nothing of any interest one can say about the election campaigns as conducted by the three main parties. There are a few things to be said about the election itself and the political situation in which this country has found itself.

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The Creation, Making Time (live) (1966)

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More Vintage Mod Era Grooviness.
 


 
The guitar player from The Creation was the first guy to use a violin bow on an electric guitar. Jimmy Page copied it from him.

These guys were produced by Shel Talmy, who also produced The Kinks and The Who. Too bad they didn’t make it big, too. Wow: Talmy is still working, which is very cool. I would like to shake that man’s hand. How much unalloyed happiness did he help to create? Plus, he’s from Chicago, so he’s one of the Boyz.

(YouTube is the greatest thing ever. I have been devoted to this kind of music since I was about 15 years old, and I had heard of this group but never heard this song before. And now I can see an actual live performance by these guys, from the Golden Age itself, as if by magic, available on demand, for free … even on my phone? Whoa. We truly live in The Jetsons Age of totally crazy, knock-me-out coolness. I just wanted to register this note of happiness, and step back, and not take all this insane greatness for granted for a minute. Really, if you told people fifteen years ago about what we would have at our fingertips today they’d have said you were on drugs. I would not live in any other time or place for anything.)

Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby

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Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby

Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby, late of the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues), author of A Ride to Khiva: Travels and Adventures in Central Asia and On Horseback Through Asia Minor. He was also a pioneering aeronaut, author of A Ride Across the Channel: and Other Adventures in the Air. Col. Burnaby met his death in the hand-to-hand fighting of the Battle of Abu Klea, 1885. Queen Victoria fainted when she heard of his death.

Captain Frederick Augustus Burnaby of the Royal Horse Guards was no ordinary officer. For a start he was a man of prodigious strength and stature. Standing six-foot-four in his stockinged feet, weighing fifteen stone, and possessing a 47 inch chest, he was reputed to be the strongest man in the British Army. Indeed, it was even said that he could carry a small pony under his arm. … Nor was this son of a country parson entirely brawn. He also displayed a remarkable gift for languages, being fluent in at least seven, including Russian, Turkish and Arabic. Finally, he was born with an insatiable appetite for adventure which he combined with a vigorous and colourful prose style. Inevitably, these two latter qualities brought him into contact with Fleet Street, with the result that during his generous annual leaves he served abroad on several occasions as a special correspondent of The Times and other journals … .

From The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk.

I am halfway through “A Ride to Khiva” and I am very grateful to Google Books, which provides full text, out-of-copyright books, at this point everything published before 1922. Through this wonderful service, I have been easily able to make the acquaintance of this extraordinary officer in his own prose, via Kindle.

One quote from the book. Burnaby is in St. Petersburg, and he sends a written request to the Russian Minister of War, Gen. Miliutin, asking his leave to travel across Russia and on to Khiva, which is (at that point) still beyond the Russian frontier. Miliutin responds in the negative, and offering as his explanation that he cannot answer for the security of travelers beyond the Tsar’s domains.

I should have much liked to have asked Gen. Miliutin one question, and to have heard his answer — not given solemnly as the Russian Chancellor makes his promises, but face to face, as a soldier — would he, when a captain, have turned his face homeward to St. Petersburg simply because he was told by a foreign government that it could not be responsible for his safety? I do not think so; and I have a far higher opinion of the Russian officers than to imagine that they would be deterred by such an argument if used to them under circumstances similar to those in which I found myself.

Burnaby, of course, goes anyway.

For further details, see The Life of Colonel Fred Burnaby By Thomas Wright (1908), and The True Blue: The Life and Adventures of Colonel Fred Burnaby, by Michael Alexander (1957).