The forgotten Few

Second Son, he’s eight, told me something yesterday when I picked him up from school.

They’ve been covering World War Two in their history lessons. He thinks this is great because he knows more about it than anyone else in the class, including the teacher I think.

Yesterday, she was telling them about the Blitz and the damage the German bombing raids had done. This is pretty much how he told it to me:

The teacher’s going on about the raids:

Wave upon wave of German bombers… blah blah… attacking our cities night after night… blah blah blah… virtually unopposed… blah blah… defenceless families huddled in their shelters... blah blah blah… terrible destruction… blah blah… the horror of war.

And all the time, my boy’s trying to add in the stuff she’s missing out:

They used to put up barrage balloons… we had anti-aircraft guns that could hit them … at night they’d have these big searchlights… it’s not like we were completely defenceless …they sent up planes to try and intercept them.

I think the teacher had been trying to carry on regardless, but when the Big Fella’s got something to say, he’s going to say it. He’s not pushy but he is persistent.

So anyway, the teacher finished up in time to catch what he’d been saying about sending up planes to intercept the German bombers. “Planes?” she said. “Oh yes, but not many, we only had a few.”

On the way home he said “You know Dad, I don’t think she really knew what she was talking about.” No son, neither do I.

UPDATE
Second Son read this post today and asked me to add something.

He wants you to know that during the war the pilots of Britain’s Fighter Command were sometimes referred to as “The Few”. This came about after Churchill gave a speech to the House of Commons, in which he praised them for their service, saying: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

By the end of October 1940, these “few” had won the Battle of Britain. That victory didn’t stop the bombing of British cities, but it reduced the threat considerably by making large-scale daylight raids too costly an undertaking for an already depleted Luftwaffe.

The teacher didn't know that.