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Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chamberlain hoped to ‘avoid worst' as Second World War loomed
Neville Chamberlain wrote 'I still hope we may avoid the worst' six days before the start of the Second World War, a letter has revealed. The former prime minister is infamous for his failed appeasement policy, which saw him offer Adolf Hitler numerous concessions to try to avoid war. Now a newly discovered letter suggests he clung on to the hope his strategy would pay off up until the moment Germany invaded Poland on Sept 1 1939. Writing to Captain William Brass, the Conservative MP, on Aug 26 1939, he said: 'I still hope we may avoid the worst, but if it comes we are thank God prepared for it.' Chamberlain's confidence in Britain's readiness for war would prove to be misplaced as within nine months the Nazis had captured swathes of Europe. More than 330,000 British Expeditionary Force troops had to be hastily evacuated at Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4 1940, to enable Britain to 'fight another day'. The day before Chamberlain's hopeful note, however, Britain had signed the Anglo-Polish military alliance, promising to support Poland if its independence was threatened. Hitler had originally scheduled his invasion of Poland for Aug 26, but when news of the Anglo-Polish pact reached Berlin, he temporarily postponed the attack by six days. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement saw Britain make no response to Hitler's annexation of Austria in March 1938, a move Winston Churchill warned at the time was a mistake. During a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said: 'The gravity of the annexation of Austria cannot be exaggerated.' Hitler quickly moved on to trying to control the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and by Sept 1928 Chamberlain had flown to Hitler's holiday home to negotiate in person, to no avail. Chamberlain said at the time: 'How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.' The Munich agreement saw Chamberlain sign over the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany from Oct 1 1938, in exchange for Hitler giving up on plans for further expansion across Europe. Churchill called it a 'total and unmitigated defeat' and it failed to stop Nazi Germany annexing more Czech land, including Prague, and launching an invasion of Poland – which finally sparked war. Chamberlain lost the confidence of Parliament and resigned as prime minister in May 1940, when Churchill stepped up to lead the nation. The one-page letter, on 10 Downing Street letterhead and dated Aug 26 1939, has emerged for sale at RR Auction in Boston, US. It is tipped to fetch $20,000 (£15,000) because of its historical significance. An RR Auction spokesman said: 'Behind the scenes, British diplomats were still scrambling to avert war. Chamberlain hoped that deterrence, through strong alliances and military mobilisation, might still dissuade Hitler. 'At the same time, Britain was accelerating preparations – air raid precautions were being implemented across cities, reservists were being called up, and public morale was being steeled for the possibility of conflict. 'Thus Britain found itself in a state of grim resolve: committed to defending Poland, preparing for war, yet still clinging to fragile hopes that Hitler might yet be deterred. 'Within a week, however, those hopes would be extinguished as Germany launched its invasion of Poland on September 1.' The sale takes place on Wednesday. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Chamberlain hoped to ‘avoid worst' as Second World War loomed
Neville Chamberlain wrote 'I still hope we may avoid the worst' six days before the start of the Second World War, a letter has revealed. The former prime minister is infamous for his failed appeasement policy, which saw him offer Adolf Hitler numerous concessions to try to avoid war. Now a newly discovered letter suggests he clung on to the hope his strategy would pay off up until the moment Germany invaded Poland on Sept 1 1939. Writing to Captain William Brass, the Conservative MP, on Aug 26 1939, he said: 'I still hope we may avoid the worst, but if it comes we are thank God prepared for it.' Chamberlain's confidence in Britain's readiness for war would prove to be misplaced as within nine months the Nazis had captured swathes of Europe. More than 330,000 British Expeditionary Force troops had to be hastily evacuated at Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4 1940, to enable Britain to 'fight another day'. The day before Chamberlain 's hopeful note, however, Britain had signed the Anglo-Polish military alliance, promising to support Poland if its independence was threatened. Hitler had originally scheduled his invasion of Poland for Aug 26, but when news of the Anglo-Polish pact reached Berlin, he temporarily postponed the attack by six days. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement saw Britain make no response to Hitler's annexation of Austria in March 1938, a move Winston Churchill warned at the time was a mistake. During a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said: 'The gravity of the annexation of Austria cannot be exaggerated.' 'Total and unmitigated defeat' Hitler quickly moved on to trying to control the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and by Sept 1928 Chamberlain had flown to Hitler's holiday home to negotiate in person, to no avail. Chamberlain said at the time: 'How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.' The Munich agreement saw Chamberlain sign over the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany from Oct 1 1938, in exchange for Hitler giving up on plans for further expansion across Europe. Churchill called it a 'total and unmitigated defeat' and it failed to stop Nazi Germany annexing more Czech land, including Prague, and launching an invasion of Poland – which finally sparked war. Chamberlain lost the confidence of Parliament and resigned as prime minister in May 1940, when Churchill stepped up to lead the nation. The one-page letter, on 10 Downing Street letterhead and dated Aug 26 1939, has emerged for sale at RR Auction in Boston, US. It is tipped to fetch $20,000 (£15,000) because of its historical significance. An RR Auction spokesman said: 'Behind the scenes, British diplomats were still scrambling to avert war. Chamberlain hoped that deterrence, through strong alliances and military mobilisation, might still dissuade Hitler. 'At the same time, Britain was accelerating preparations – air raid precautions were being implemented across cities, reservists were being called up, and public morale was being steeled for the possibility of conflict. 'Thus Britain found itself in a state of grim resolve: committed to defending Poland, preparing for war, yet still clinging to fragile hopes that Hitler might yet be deterred. 'Within a week, however, those hopes would be extinguished as Germany launched its invasion of Poland on September 1.' The sale takes place on Wednesday.
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First Post
7 days ago
- Politics
- First Post
History Today: When the evacuation at Dunkirk during World War II came to an end
More than 338,000 soldiers of the Allied Forces were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk in France on June 4, 1940, making this one of the biggest evacuation missions during the war. The soldiers had been cornered on the beaches of Dunkirk in France after the German forces rapidly advanced. On this day in 1917, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in the categories of journalism, letters and drama read more Troops of the British Expeditionary Force landed from a destroyer at a British Port on June 1, 1940 after being evacuated following heroic fighting from Flanders. File image/AP One of the biggest evacuation missions during World War II, the Evacuation at Dunkirk, came to an end on June 4, 1940. More than 338,000 Allied soldiers were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk in France, while under heavy German bombardment during World War II. If you are a history geek who loves to learn about important events from the past, Firstpost Explainers' ongoing series, History Today will be your one-stop destination to explore key events. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD On this day in 1917, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, marking a transformative moment in the history of American journalism, literature and public service. Here is all that happened on this day. The evacuation at Dunkirk came to an end One of the momentous events took place on June 4, 1940, with the conclusion of the evacuation at Dunkirk during World War II . More than 338,000 British, French and Belgian troops were rescued from the advancing German forces who had rapidly pushed them to the French coast. The German forces were closing in on the Allied soldiers in France, forcing the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and its counterparts towards the English Channel. Dunkirk was the last viable port for evacuation and the situation appeared dire. Facing the prospect of destruction, the British military launched a desperate Operation Dynamo on May 26, 1940, using Royal Navy vessels and a flotilla of over 800 civilian boats, ranging from fishing trawlers to pleasure yachts, collectively known as the 'Little Ships of Dunkirk.' Destroyers filled with evacuated British troops berthing at Dover on May 31, 1940. Wikimedia Commons Despite intense aerial bombardment from the Luftwaffe and constant threat from German artillery, the evacuation continued day and night. The weather, with low cloud cover and smoke from the burning town providing some concealment, also aided the operation. By June 4, the last of the rear-guard British and French troops were evacuated. Although around 40,000 Allied troops were left behind and captured, the success of Operation Dynamo allowed Britain to retain a significant portion of its army, bolstering national morale at a crucial moment. Prime Minister Winston Churchil l famously tempered the celebration with caution, reminding the nation, 'Wars are not won by evacuations,' while still hailing the event as a 'miracle of deliverance.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD First Pulitzer Prizes were awarded June 4, 1917, is one of the turning points in American journalism as the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded . The awards were organised through the will of a Hungarian-born newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, in a bid to elevate the standards of journalism and literature. Pulitzer, known for his innovative approaches at the New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, had long advocated for higher education in journalism. His will, which set aside funds for a school of journalism at Columbia University and for the prizes, specified categories for journalism, letters and drama. The initial awards in 1917 recognized works published in 1916. While there were ambitious plans for several categories, some prizes, such as for a novel and drama, were not awarded that first year due to insufficient entries or a lack of works deemed worthy by the juries. A sign for the Pulitzer prize is shown at the Columbia University in New York in 2019. File image/AP The very first Public Service Prize in journalism went to the New York Times for its comprehensive and courageous coverage of World War I. In the Letters and Drama division, the first Pulitzer for History was awarded to Jean Jules Jusserand, the French ambassador to the US, for his book 'With Americans of Past and Present Days'. Interestingly, the award for the Novel category was not presented in 1917, as no submission was deemed worthy that year. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Joseph Pulitzer had envisioned the awards as a way to uplift the standards of journalism and to promote public accountability. This Day, That Year On this day in 1970, the Kingdom of Tonga achieved independence within the British Commonwealth. The world's first shopping carts were introduced at Humpty Dumpty grocery stores in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1937. On this day in 1783, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier launched an uncrewed hot-air balloon, the first public demonstration of the discovery that hot air in a large lightweight bag rises. With inputs from agencies
IOL News
26-05-2025
- IOL News
Looking back: A seismic election changes SA politics forever, the 'Miracle of Dunkirk, and black South African on top of the world
Sibusiso Vilane at the summit of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes, the highest mountain in the Americas, in 2005. Vilane will soon be the first African to complete the Three Poles Challenge " having reached the North Pole, South Pole, and Mount Everest. Sibusiso Vilane at the summit of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes, the highest mountain in the Americas, in 2005. Vilane will soon be the first African to complete the Three Poles Challenge " having reached the North Pole, South Pole, and Mount Everest. 1872 During a 'terrific gale', seven ships are wrecked, with the loss of 10 lives, at the Buffalo River, East London. 1878 Interpretive dancer Isadora Duncan is born in San Francisco. She revolutionised the entire concept of dance by developing a free-form style and rebelled against tradition, performing barefoot in a loose fitting tunic. She experienced worldwide acclaim as well as personal tragedy. Her two children drowned, her marriage failed, and she met a bizarre death in 1927 when a scarf she was wearing caught in the wheel of the open car in which she was riding, strangling her1908 The first big commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made in Persia (Iran). 1940 The Dunkirk evacuation is begun to save the British Expeditionary Force trapped by advancing German armies on the northern coast of France. Boats and vessels of all shapes and sizes ferried 200 000 British and 140 000 French and Belgian soldiers across the English Channel by June 2. 1948 The Herenigde Nasionale Party pulls off a surprise general election win which will change the landscape of South Africa. 1961 A US Hustler bomber crosses the Atlantic in about 3 hours, twice as fast as an airliner. 1991 Major-General Ken van der Spuy, veteran of both world wars, as well as the Russian Civil War, dies aged 99. He was South Africa's first qualified military pilot and the first South African Air Force pilot. 2003 Sibusiso Vilane, 32, is the first Black South African to summit Mount Everest. 2004 The New York Times publishes admission of journalistic failings, claims its flawed reporting and lack of scepticism during buildup to 2003 Iraq War helped promote belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. 2018 Real Madrid beat Liverpool for their third straight Champions League title. Manager Zinédine Zidane becomes the first to win 3 consecutive titles. 2019 Nine climbers die in a week on Mount Everest after overcrowding leads to queues. 2021 Amazon says it will buy 97-year-old film and TV studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $8.45 billion. DAILY NEWS
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘I rescued one of Dunkirk's Little Ships and spent £250,000 restoring it'
It was, the World War Two veteran and writer Arthur D Divine once recalled, 'the queerest, most nondescript flotilla that ever was'. In the final week of May in 1940, some 850 boats – from pleasure cruisers to fishing vessels, barges to private yachts – made up a patchwork civilian armada braided by one simple mission statement: bring them home. As they motored from Ramsgate across the Channel towards Dunkirk, 'we were in a sort of dark traffic lane, full of strange ghosts and weird, unaccountable waves from the wash of the larger vessels,' Divine wrote. 'When destroyers went by, full tilt, the wash was a serious matter to us little fellows. We could only spin the wheel to try to head into the waves, hang on, and hope for the best.' In the decades afterwards, the sentiment of those last four words came to attach itself to Operation Dynamo, the World War Two mission to rescue over 338,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from France. Primarily involving the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy and civilian volunteers, 'the Miracle of Dunkirk' was indeed an astonishing feat, yet while the gods may have smiled on Normandy for those nine days, this remarkable act of deliverance was as much an achievement of planning and logistics as it was improvisation or pluck. And when it was mission accomplished, there was no time for congratulation, no moment to catch breath. 'Wars are not won by evacuations,' Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons on 4 June, and it's true: there was work to do. So while the Navy regrouped and military leaders plotted the next moves, almost all the troops recovered from Dunkirk went back into training, ready to be redeployed within months wherever they were needed. As for that hodgepodge fleet of vessels who carried them home, their fates were less predictable. Some returned from whence they came, many were lost, and a few remained with the Navy, which had requisitioned them in the first place. They came together to answer the call, then scattered as quickly as they arrived. The 'Little Ships of Dunkirk', as they'd be known, simply floated on with the tides. 'She's beautiful, isn't she?' Phil Christodolou says, beetling along a wooden pier at Penton Hook Marina in Chertsey, at the hem of south-west London and Surrey. There are around 500 boats berthed here, in the non-tidal reaches of the River Thames, but one, gently yawing under the midday sun, is a little more special than the rest. Quisisana, a 30ft pleasure cruiser built by Thornycroft at Hampton-on-Thames 98 years ago, was entirely unremarkable at the time she was launched. By 1940, though, she was on her way to Dunkirk, and returned as one of the most famous Little Ships of them all. 'Hold on, I'll get the photo,' Christodolou says, retrieving a book about Dunkirk that features Quisisana on the cover. There in the photograph (pictured at the top of the article) is Quisisana being towed into Dover in June 1940, decks laden with 18 troops from the Coldstream Guards, who were among the last to leave the beaches after securing Dunkirk from the advancing German forces. The image sums up the quiet heroism of these diminutive crafts. It seems as if it is heaving beneath the weight of the men, but they'd have been lost without it. 'That photograph's been used absolutely everywhere, on books, postcards, stamps, all sorts,' Christodolou says. 'It's part of living history.' The 59-year-old Londoner, who's worked for most of his life in live events, including in the music industry and Formula One, has lived on a handsome barge, Bella G, at this end of the Thames since 2021. Across the Staines Road, the rollercoasters of Thorpe Park loom. 'Sometimes, when the wind's down, you hear the screams,' Christodolou says, cheerfully. Soon after moving here, Christodolou met a classic boat enthusiast with close ties to the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships (ADLS). He became fascinated with the heroism of these everyday vessels, whose number is rapidly shrinking as they're lost or fall into disrepair. Moved to halt that decline, he set about trying to find one to buy and do up. 'I'd looked at a few and couldn't really find anything that was right, there were some real states out there,' he recalls. One day, Ian Gilbert, the honorary vice admiral of the ADLS, contacted him and told him about Quisisana. 'He said he'd been approached by the estate of one of the association's members, Martin Lowe, about Quisisana, which he'd owned for about a decade and hadn't been able to afford to look after. Ian said the estate wants it to go to someone who can look after her, but warned she's in Lowestoft, is a complete basket case, and needs a complete restoration.' Christodolou, who is nothing if not impulsive, enthusiastic and solvent, didn't need to hear any more. The aforementioned photograph means Quisisana – whose name is based on an Italian phrase qui si sana, meaning 'where you are healed' – is something of a celebrity among the Little Ships, and returning her to former glory became a passion project that instantly took over Christodolou's life. He purchased Quisisana for £5,000 in February 2022. Now, what is it they say about buying a boat…? He chuckles. 'Well, the clean version is that the two best days are the day you buy it and the day you sell it…' When he first picked Quisisana up, 'there were great big holes in her, planks were missing… She was, as I say, a basket case. We don't think she'd touched the water for at least 10 years.' Christodolou contacted Malcolm Jones of C&M Traditional Boat Repairs, who specialises in classic wooden boat restorations and had recently refurbished a sister ship to Quisisana called Nydia, and installed his new purchase in Jones's yard in Egham. She sat there for two years while Jones set to work. 'Phil had a blank canvas to do what he wanted,' Jones, 67, says today. 'It was a perfect starting point really, exactly what you want to see. The previous owner had started to strip things out, so we could just carry on. So often you do jobs where you agonise over whether to take this or that out before you start, but this was brilliant.' There are more veterans of Dunkirk around our waterways than you might think. The ADLS does its best to keep track of all the Little Ships still with us, and many can be seen in marinas, on rivers and pootling around our coasts, but as with lots of veterans, don't often make a great show of it. Jones has restored five or six for private owners, and owns one himself. Each bears a flag denoting its part in our national history. Others are hidden in plain sight. It was only in recent years that I realised I'd been walking past one – the pleasure cruiser Hurlingham, which can usually be seen around Millbank – every morning on my way into the office. Like its ill-fated sister ship Marchioness, which sank disastrously in the Thames in 1989, Hurlingham was requisitioned by the Royal Navy for Operation Dynamo in 1940, but never actually left British waters. 'There are a lot of little urban myths about the Little Ships, and one is that all the owners of these boats suddenly thought they needed to help so went across the Channel. They were actually collected by the Navy, then often towed over there just to make trips from the beach to bigger ships,' Christodolou says. 'The Thames was seen as a place where there would be a load of shallow draft boats that would be the right shape and size. There's all sorts of stories, a woman who lived on hers and came back to Teddington boatyard to find all her belongings, including her cat, being put on the side of the river while they refuelled and took it.' The basic issue at Dunkirk was that the advancing German army had funnelled the BEF into a narrow strip of land, where troops piled up on the beaches and couldn't be evacuated quickly enough. Large ships were unable to get close; the Navy was short on ways to ferry them. 'Again, it's another myth that the original skippers took the boats over. Most of the ships were skippered by members of the Navy or, as in Quisisana's case, Navy Veteran Reserve.' Specifically, at the helm of Quisisana was Sub-Lieutenant AJ Weaver. He and a naval rating took her to France and back. 'Originally they thought they'd be able to get 30-40,000 off the beach. In the end they managed over 300,000 with the Little Ships. And that's the part of the story that really got me. It's amazing, the difference they made,' Christodolou Nolan's Oscar-nominated 2017 film Dunkirk did a lot to revive interest in the tale. In the film, Mark Rylance plays the skipper of a Little Ship whose voyage is made even choppier by Cillian Murphy's soldier character being haunted by what he's seen at war. 'That film just moved it on to a new generation. The tourist board in Dunkirk have said there's been a massive resurgence in interest thanks to it, which is fantastic. Nolan used a lot of the real boats that went, and amalgamated various stories into it,' Christodolou says. The finished Quisisana, which Jones and his team completed last summer, is indeed a thing of great beauty. Both men cried when the job was done. Two berths over from Bella G, she glimmers with polished- wooden superiority among the white fibreglass hulls of other boats in the marina. At initial glance, it looks as if Jones and Christodolou, who spoke almost daily for two years as they volleyed ideas back and forth, have been entirely faithful to how Quisisana looked a century ago. And they have, to a point. 'My vision was that she's too big to be a museum piece, so you've got to make it usable. I wanted it to look traditional and then hide underneath the things that bring her up to date,' Christodolou says. Jones, a master shipwright, revelled in the details, finding larch wood harvested from the Sandringham Estate to finish the hull's carvel planking, for instance. He and his team bent each into place around the oak ribs and secured them with copper clench nails and roves – just as the original builders would have done in the 1920s That sort of fidelity to the original Quisisana was followed throughout the main structure and surface of the boat. Underneath, though, it's a little more up-to-date. Christodolou peels one mahogany panel back to reveal a fridge well-stocked with tins of Gordon's gin and tonic. Another unsheathes an air fryer, which he deemed an essential requirement for the modern, discerning pleasure cruiser. 'As I said to Malcolm at one point, 'You don't buy your granny Primark underwear for Christmas, do you?'' he says, by way of explanation. I turn to Jones. What was Christodolou's most outrageous request? 'Probably when he said he wanted a dolphin on the side of the boat in LED lighting.' Christodolou giggles. 'I went to a boat show and saw this company that does LED lights that follow the water line… I came back and went, 'I want that!'' He was swiftly disabused of the idea. 'Anything can be done, really, and hidden,' Jones says. 'Wi-fi, sinks, the black water tank for a modern toilet, it's all doable, it's just time and money.' With its rich, dark wood and plush leather furnishings, the galley looks like the cigar lounge in a gentleman's club, and leads to a private berth just big enough for two people who know one another very well indeed. Christodolou envisaged a quiet luxury about the finished product. He chose a colour called 'St James's red' for the leather and many of the furnishings, then added cushions made from red and gold silk to match the ribbon of the Dunkirk medal. In the loo are clippings and images relating to the boat's history Jones found on eBay. The chrome gauges and organ-stop switches, meanwhile, are entirely traditional, but tucked away behind a panel is a state-of-the-art Garmin chartplotter. Other mod-cons are hidden just as elegantly. To glance at the new Quisisana is to see a beautiful example of care and craftsmanship in restoration, but the tricks and toys underneath show, if anything, an even greater level of care: in incorporating the new alongside the old, Jones and Christodolou have ensured Quisisana will remain ship shape for a very long time. 'We just spent absolutely ages working out how I can spend as much of Phil's money as I could…' Jones jokes. 'But he was so interested in everything, so involved, selecting the hides, buying so much of it himself. We need to protect the Little Ships, and this boat is just lucky it found someone like Phil, who can put so much into it.' After buying it for £5,000, how much did he end up spending? He winces. 'About a quarter of a million… and that's a conservative estimate,' Christodolou says. But it's all worth it to him. And he'll never sell her on, he says. 'I can't part with her now.' The plan, then, is to take Quisisana to as many Little Ship reunion events as possible. Current members of the Coldstream Guards have already been on board for a cruise, and Christodolou has shown her off up and down the Thames over the last year, enjoying many admiring glances wherever he docks. But the goal was always to have Quisisana ready and dressed to the nines for the 85th anniversary of Operation Dynamo. To mark the occasion, Christodolou will motor up the Thames to Ramsgate, where he'll join up with a flotilla of dozens of other Dunkirk Little Ships for a very special return journey across the Channel. 'I think it'll be brilliant going over, but really quite emotional coming back in, in a flotilla of 60 or so. Being welcomed home into a Ramsgate harbour packed with cheering and waving people, especially if it's a nice sunny day, will be really quite something.' He pauses. 'Hopefully there'll be the same number of us as there were that went out…' Today, as we putter around the marina for a few minutes on placid waters, it's hard to imagine the shivering, terrified soldiers scrambling aboard all those years ago as the Luftwaffe droned overheard. 'Oh, it's two different worlds,' Christodolou says, shaking his head. 'But this is about preservation and keeping it going. These are now the last of the veterans. It's our job to keep their memory alive, isn't it?' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
