Project Progress News

© The Times, London 26 October 2004

Czech valour honoured on London monument
BY PETER DAVIES

Reproduced in full with the kind permission of The Times newspaper

WHEN a maquette of figures from the Battle of Britain monument, to be erected next summer on the Thames Embankment, is given to the Czech Embassy in Kensington on Thursday, it will salute the role that airmen from the prewar Czechoslovak Air Force played in that decisive conflict.

Lord Tebbit, chairman of the Battle of Britain monument committee, will present to Stefan Füle, the Czech Ambassador, a dramatic section of the monument's frieze which depicts pilots rushing for their aircraft after receiving the order "scramble" on the telephone. Lord Tebbit will receive from Mr Füle a cheque for £53,000 as the Czech Republic's contribution to construction of the monument.

The monument, whose bronze plaques will honour Czech and Slovak combatants, alongside those of Britain, the Commonwealth, other European countries and America, is an imaginative use of a dour granite structure which for years languished almost unnoticed on the Victoria Embankment. In its heyday it served as a ventilation shaft for the steam locomotives which pulled the carriages of what is now the Underground's District Line as they plied beneath the embankment created by the great engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette from the 1860s onwards.

Now, thanks to a partnership between the Battle of Britain Historical Society and the architects Donald Insall Associates, this large "chimney", which was filled with rubble after steam traction gave way to electricity on the Underground, will have a second lease of life as a remarkable tribute, built on an accessibly human scale, to those who participated in any way whatsoever to the dramatic events of the summer of 1940.

Tony Dyson, of Donald Insall Associates, has conceived a setting that will not challenge the more monumental air memorials in the vicinity: the RAF monument; the Fleet Air Arm memorial and the imperious statue of the commander-in-chief of the wartime RAF, Lord Portal of Hungerford.

A huge "slice" cut diagonally through the 25-metre-long granite block will enable the passer-by to walk between friezes of bronze figures created by the sculptor Paul Day, whose strongly figurative work is admired for its vitality in such works as Brussels - an urban comedy for that city's Royal St Hubert galleries.

Besides the airmen, there are the anti-aircraft gunners, factory workers, civilians packed into shelters, air raid wardens and tea ladies, all of whom have their place in this vibrant account of what it felt like to live through the momentous months of the battle that saved Britain from invasion.

In all, 89 Czechs fought as fighter pilots during the period July 10-October 31, 1940. Most of these men had escaped from Czechoslovakia into Poland after the occupation of their country by the Germans in March 1939. From there they made their way to France, where they were drafted into the Armée de l'Air. As such they were heavily engaged in the air fighting from May 10, 1940, as the French Army and British Expeditionary Force recoiled under the German onslaught.

On June 17, shortly before France capitulated, the first 30 Czech pilots reached Britain. A fortnight after they landed at Hendon, Eduard Benes, the Czech President-in-Exile, wrote to the Air Secretary, Sir Archibald Sinclair, urging him to allow these pilots to fight the Germans alongside the RAF. By mid-July, the first Czech squadron, No 310, had been formed in Fighter Command. It was followed by a Wellington bomber squadron, No 311, and in August by another Hurricane squadron, No 312.
Small though their numbers were, with their previous exposure to air combat these airmen brought invaluable experience to the hard-pressed RAF.

Characteristic of their number was the celebrated ace, Josef Frantisek, who became one of the highest-scoring pilots of any nation in the Battle of Britain. Something of a loner, he flew not with a Czech squadron, but with No 303, the Polish "Warsaw-Kosciusco" Squadron, to which he had been posted. By the time he was killed in a crash-landing on October 8, 1940, Frantisek had achieved 17 combat victories in little more than five weeks, and was the top-scoring Czech pilot of the war.

Thursday's ceremony celebrates the unhesitating sacrifice of men like him and his Czechoslovak comrades, in Britain's hour of desperate need.

Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.