The Few
#######

:date: 2015-09-10T19:46:00
:category: faith
:tags: Czechoslovakia, RAF, SecondWorldWar, Slovakia, FirstThings, blogComment

On September 15, 2015 we are remembering the seventy-fifth 
anniversary of the `Battle of Britain Day`_ . George Weigel wrote 
for The First Things a lovely remberance article_ about it, and 
I have added this comment:

.. _`Battle of Britain Day`:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_Day
.. _article:
    https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/09/remembering-the-few

First, as a Czech, let me thank you for mentioning the
Czechoslovak airmen (not sure whether there were any women
involved at all). However, I have to admit you confused me a
little. You mentioned “Polish and Czech volunteers”. It is
technically incorrect. All of them were proud to fight what they
considered to be their country, which was Czechoslovakia (they
have it on their shoulder marks, although that could give them an
immediate death sentence if caught by Germans, because then they
wouldn’t be considered an enemy fighters, but traitors), and
they never recognized occupation of the Czech lands as legal (and
separation of Slovakia).

Then I stopped myself thinking. “How many of them actually were
Slovaks? Slovakia was then semi-independent puppet state, so how
many of them deserted to Britain?” When looking at
http://cz-raf.hyperlink.cz/ I cannot distinguish their
nationality (and officially then their legal nationality was
Czechoslovak, which made Slovak patriots very unhappy), but at
least I can say that some of them had place of birth in what is
the current and then Slovakia. It would be interesting to know
more about the Slovak fighters in RAF (if there were any).

Also, for the very good treatment of the whole history (and
perhaps even a bit of enlightenment for the American viewers) I
would strongly suggest the TV series “`Foyle’s war`_” .
Although a mystery stories series, I think it is one of better
descriptions of whole situations and context of the war (and the
son of the main hero of the show is a RAF fighter pilot).

.. _`Foyle’s war`:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foyle%27s_War