PPRuNe Forums - Derwent Lancaster

Yep, I am very proud to count myself among the offspring of the nation that devised, saw through and led such adventures that define our country's finest hours and which still inspire us to go on to achieve other great things ...

But the Dambusters mission was also a terrible reminder of the enormous costs numbered in fine young lives of aircrews, and in those of innocent good people caught up in the collateral damage. Their only fault was to have been unfortunate enough to have been raised to call somewhere in Germany "home" at a time when their leaders went so over the top in their quest to rebuild their country's pride and give their citizens a sense of national identity and strength again.

I was reminded of the same quest for regained pride when I watched the Putin/Medjedev handover ceremony recently on tv. There is nothing ugly in a proud people, so long as it is kept on a level where there is still room for the balancing values of self-deprecation and humility.

Many once proud nations have a tendency to luxuriate after repairing their own greatness periodically. Even us!

I have been a Dambusters 'fan' all my life and I guess it is no great surprise that my son called it his favorite film from a young age and still counts it as one.

But the gravity of it as turning point in history really hit home with me when I happened to be visiting a crafts exhibition in a small but very fine small town in Germany called Soest, just before the last World Cup. I discovered that the Mohne dam was literally just round the corner from where we stayed.

One evening just before dusk, we went to the dam, and I ended up walking to the middle alone. No-one else was on the dam. It was very quiet, and the weather was moody with a hint of possible rain, but it was warm enough for the midges to be barring the route across the top in swarms too much for my other half to bear. She went back to the car. Way down the valley below the dam, a few lights had started to appear in houses as locals were settling down for their evening. The air was completely still. There was only the sound of evening birdsong in the trees to the side of the dam complex ...

I had already read about the repair of the dam on the sign board near the car park, and I had a good idea of where the breach had been made. But once on the thing, the size of it began to tell. It felt very odd to look back over my shoulder across the water to where the Lancasters made their approach and then to pan round to look along the dam at the slightly crooked masonry lines in the sidewalls on the top, and then to look down over the front edge and make out where the hole had extended across the centre face, and to imagine what terrible quantity of water had been instantaneously released onto the poor people down the valley ...

...Yet that evening, the most surprising thing I learned was how fast they fixed it - I think I read on the board that it was repaired in about a month?

So I wonder if the main resultant was not so much a physical interruption to the German war production, but the huge damage to moral in Germany, that we Brits could do such a thing, and the corresponding moral boost for the Allies.

It was an amazing turning point in WWII powered by the unrestricted creativity, audacity and the technical prowess of Allied ability to refine and practice something so daring and surprising. I am sure we as a country can number many such events from various conflicts, but as I have never been in the forces I can only easily compare such things to the beautiful craziness of my fellow countrymen who when asked by Mrs T if it were possible, then took equally brave young lives to the Falklands, manipulated international opinion and support in ways that only tweeded Brits can, and raised all UK spirits to wonderful new highs.

But we do of course remember all the lives lost when we do these remembrance events, and I again felt proud this morning even before the Merlins turned, because the BBC got the balance exactly right when they pointedly said so in their very first news report this morning on the 7 o'clock news as the mist was rising to greet those gathering to remember.

So, unlike shaun, I have no fear that we'll be banning events like this any time soon - we do them too well - that is, we understand the self-deprecation/humility bit too as we gaze to the sky and let the Merlins stroke our hearts and moisten our eyes. I am quite sure shaun knows what a multi-national effort the Allied fight back really was. He is right however that some of our values are currently quite difficult to define with so much outside influence in so short a time ... Thankfully many numbered among the most recent influx enjoy grandparents or great-grandparents who shared the same times and necessary adventures as ours did.

So we can easily remember together...and today we do.