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Old 31st March 2005, 16:56
Christer Bergström Christer Bergström is offline
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Re: Fighter pilots' guts

Alex, may I step in and try to mediate.

Please try to look at it like this:

You write:

Quote:
For in truth wether they were or were not , to many people alive today, they would not have the freedom they have to day if it were not for those that some seem bent on trying to denounce.
Yves might just as well have written that. For who knows what the oputcome of the Battle of Britain would have been if the French fighter pilots had been so passive as has been implied, if they not dealt the Luftwaffe such severe losses as they actually did? Yves would be right to say that we maybe would not have had the freedom we have today if it was not for "those that some seem bent on trying to denounce". See?

Before you judge the French who obeyed orders and refrained from flying to the UK in late June 1940, ask yourself what those Frenchmen thought of their colleagues in the RAF who didn't fly over to France two weeks earlier, while there still was time to save the situation - in the eyes of the Frenchmen in June 1940. Seriously, how many Frenchmen - how many people in any country - do you think gave England a chance in late June 1940? You can't compare with what the Polish pilots did. What alternative did they have? They still were at war with Germany, so they had to go where there was friendly territory. Even if they didn't either think that England had a chance. What else could they possibly have done?
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Christer Bergström

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