Spitfire 944, War and Remembrance

Hello all.

Where have I been?  It's a long and tedious story.  Suffice it to say that I've been fighting through my first semester of graduate school and it's gotten the better of me.   There is some stuff in older posts about why I'm in graduate school at the Canadian Forces Chaplaincy's grace and the taxpayer's generosity.   It's a good go, but it's a busy life.

However, I think I should be blogging again.  It's a good way for me to engage with the world, and with the many wonderful people who follow this blog.  If you're still checking in here and reading this, thank you all for your patience.

 

My brother the Mad Colonel sent me this link to short film called "Spitfire 944", made by William Lorton, the great nephew of Jim ("Doc") Savage, a flight surgeon with a US photo reconnaissance unit based in England in World War Two  The Doc took a lot of home movies which Lorton inherited, and one of the films he was intrigued by footage of a Spitfire making a wheels-up emergency landing on a grassy field, followed by scenes of a somewhat shaken young man being offered a cigarette by his mates while standing beside the crashed Spitfire.

You can see the whole story by watching the short video here.  If you are interested in military and aviation history, there's lots of good stuff here.   Even if you're not that interested, watch the reaction of the old gentleman, John Blyth, at about the ten minute mark, as he watches his younger self crashing that plane.  It's a beautiful testament to the power of memory and how history is sometimes built out of seemingly random scraps and fragments connecting our older and younger selves.   The next time I talk to a veteran, I'll be more aware of what vivid memories might lurk behind those old eyes.