COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

EPILOGUE
It was quiet and peaceful in the military cemetry below the hills near Villers
Bocage. The entrance portico with its massive columns was still wet from a
recent shower. Inside was like an English garden - fresh and reverently tended
- late roses still in bloom amongst the rows of simple headstones. Each one for
a young life cruelly terminated by war.
We moved forward and joined the gathering which surrounded the open
grave. Tomorrow's newspapers would call us veterans from the Typhoon and
Tempest Association, members of his old squadron and others, come to honour
a fallen comrade. Around us stood groups of bemedalled anciens from the
Calvados region proudly displaying their tricolour standards, uniformed members
of the French armed forces, the British air attache, the RAF Association in
France and many others.
The coffin, draped in a Union Jack, with an airman's cap at its head, stood
over the open grave. And the Chaplain's words:
"Let us remember the courage..... the sacrifice..... and render homage," as
he spoke about Reginald Thursby of 198 Squadron - seemed to encompass a
multitude who had died in battle. I never knew Thursby, who was shot down in
August 1944. But it felt right to be there when his mortal remains, recovered
with the wreckage of his aircraft in a recent dig, were laid to rest with full
military honours. For the simple service was an opportunity to remember others
as well.
The volleys of rifle fire crashed out in final salute. As the echoes died away
there came a wonderful sense of comradeship with those no longer with us and
with generations past. An experience which has touched me many times over the
years. Face to face with an immortal truth.
"/ hear them thus - Oh thus I hear1
My doomed companions crowding near
Until my faith, absolved from fear
Sings out into the morning
And tells them how we travel far
From life to life, from star to star."
The gathering round the graveside began to break up. The RAF burial party
moved away. The spell had broken. On the right of the line was a tall Flight
Lieutenant, wearing an Air Quartermaster's flying badge, matched by a flowing
blond handlebar moustache. No mistaking that combination.
The members of 16 Squadron RAF Regiment had been flown in from
Wildenrath by helicopter and Bob Bickers, recently posted from Odiham to
Germany, had come with them.
Only a matter of weeks since I had introduced him to the Duke of Edinburgh
at the end of the National Gliding Championships. The wheel of my flying life