The diaries of RAF Duxford’s station chaplain provide a memorable new perspective on the events of the summer of 1940
Many of ‘the few’ remain with us only as headstones, engraved names or biographies compiled by researchers or descendants. They can bring us the basic facts, but cannot illuminate the inner-lives of those who fell long before they would ever have dreamed of writing their memoirs, or sitting down for an oral history interview. Much of current canon cannot, in the main, convey the immediacy of how it must have felt to live at a time when victory — and with it, the promise of continued freedom — looked far from certain.