Bill Hillman's Monthly Military Tribute: Whenever I watch documentaries about the First and Second World Wars, it is always the measured language used by the staggeringly brave veterans, who faced death day after day without complaint, that gets me in the stomach. Lancaster (Sky Documentaries/Now), an encyclopedically detailed and immensely moving film about the role of the iconic bomber aircraft in the Second World War, was no exception. These men knew that every time they set off to bomb Germany they were flying into the most fiendish danger, in which 96 aircraft were destroyed in a single raid, meaning “672 empty chairs at breakfast”.
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AS YOU WERE . . .
WAR YEARS ECLECTICA :: JANUARY 2022
2022.01 Edition
Photo of a Tail Gunner on a Lancaster Bomber, Royal Canadian Air Force, 1943.
Review from a UK paper submitted by John Everitt
Lancaster review — the plane and pilots that turned the war’s tide
Carol Midgley ~ The Times, July 29 2022They chose the most impressively restrained words to describe what was obviously mind-blowing terror. “I was apprehensive”; “I certainly had butterflies in my stomach”; “You just hoped it wouldn’t be us”; “We didn’t sit around and dwell”. Extraordinary. As I always say, contrast this with the emotionally incontinent “I’ve been to hell and back” language used today by celebrities who have had a spot of unwelcome publicity or contestants who have merely been voted out of a reality TV show. They could be a different species.
The film was a thoughtful look at the men who flew LancastersDavid Fairhead and Anthony Palmer, the team behind Spitfire, have produced a sober, thoughtful film, narrated with pitch-perfect gravitas by Charles Dance, which repeatedly showed the modesty of these men, who helped to turn the tide towards victory. Their tone was never one of pride, only gratitude that they survived when thousands didn’t.
There was anger too, directed at Winston Churchill, who disassociated himself from the controversial bombing of Dresden — “a deliberate effort to destroy morale” — which killed 25,000 people, for political reasons (ie he wanted to be re-elected). “When it had been accomplished, he didn’t want to know,” said one former airman. They had to organise and fund their own memorial to the lost air crew.
Just under two hours was a long stretch to fill, but there was plenty of old footage available including scenes from The Dambusters, a truly fascinating film of the “bouncing bomb”, Barnes Wallis’s ingenious invention that could “skip” across the water like a lethal skimming stone. There were also desperately sad love stories, such as the woman whose sweetheart, a pilot named Bruce, never returned from a raid. She hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye.
I hope it brought the veterans a sense of peace to talk so candidly about the guilt they felt at being sent out night after night to kill, one saying that hitting Dresden felt like “bombing Stoke-on-Trent”, another that he was later looked upon as a “murderer”. Ursula van Dam, who was a teenager living near Dresden at the time, spoke of the “mountains of bodies” that had “burnt to death”.
“We were at war,” said Ernie, a former Lancaster pilot, “but as far as being a Christian is concerned, how could you ask God to give you his blessing when he knows you’re carrying weapons that kill people? But I’m afraid something had to be done.” Another former member of Bomber Command said: “We know now that they killed six million Jews. Any country which sanctions that deserves any punishment they get.”
In the end this was less a film about the Lancaster bomber as a piece of military hardware, and more about what it meant to those young men, some only teenagers, who risked their lives in it. I’m glad that today whenever airmen board a Lancaster they touch the memorial plaque near the door as they get in, as if to say to all those young, dead men: “We’re taking you with us.”
