Čt 10 září 2015

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:

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).

Category: faith Tagged: Czechoslovakia RAF SecondWorldWar Slovakia FirstThings blogComment