Annual Memorial Day at Capel-le-Ferne
Several thousand people attended the annual Memorial Day at the National Memorial to The Few at Capel-le-Ferne, Kent, writes Geoff Simpson.
A highlight was the unveiling, by HRH Prince Michael of Kent, of a tablet beside the Christopher Foxley-Norris Memorial Wall containing a poem by Flight Lieutenant William Walker, AE who flew Spitfires with 616 Squadron in the Battle of Britain. Another centre-piece of the event was a flypast by the Avro Lancaster and a Supermarine Spitfire from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
After the service of commemoration led by the Venerable (AVM) Ray Pentland, Chaplain-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force, wreaths were laid at the Memorial, named in honour of the late Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, a Hurricane fighter pilot in 1940 and first President of the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust. The veterans then made their own personal tributes.
For the first time at the event, the day’s events were drawn to a close by a sunset ceremony featuring ATC Cadets who stood on the grass bank behind the memorial wall, and who lowered their standards in the traditional fashion.
“We set out to make this year special and I am delighted that both the numbers attending and the coverage we received from the media were as good as we had hoped for,” commented Battle of Britain Memorial Trust chairman Richard Hunting CBE.
Flight Lieutenant Walker, 96, read the poem Our Wall, which is a tribute to the Battle of Britain clasp holders whose names are displayed there. The poem reads:
Here inscribed the names of friends we knew
Young men with whom we often flew
Scrambled to many angels high
They knew that they or friends might die
Many were very scarcely trained
And many badly burnt or maimed
Behind each name a story lies of bravery in summer skies
Though many brave unwritten tales
Were simply told in vapour trails
Many now lie in sacred graves
And many rest beneath the waves
Outnumbered every day they flew
Remembered here as just ‘The Few’
During the ceremony, watched by the large crowd which braved the heat of a glorious summer's day, Mr Walker said that when he wrote the poem his thoughts were, in particular, of his friend Sergeant Marmaduke Ridley.
Ridley had joined the RAF in January 1931 as an Aircraft Apprentice, but later applied for pilot training – for which he was selected. He joined 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron in early 1940. He was involved in what was the squadron’s first real action of the war over Dunkirk on 28 May 1940. During the engagement Ridley’s Spitfire Mk.I was badly damaged and he suffered a head wound. It was on 26 August 1940, that the 24-year-old was shot down and killed, possibly a victim of Hauptmann Fözö of 4/JG 51, during combat over Dover. Sergeant Ridley was buried in Folkestone New Cemetery at Hawkinge.
At a dinner in tribute to the veterans on the previous evening a group of sixteen of The Few, out of about ninety survivors, gathered together for a photograph. During the Memorial Day itself, a total of nineteen Battle of Britain Clasp holders were present.
