St John's Cathedral, Brisbane and the Anzac Legend

As a reminder of home, Doris placed a sprig of Australian wattle on Middleton’s grave. She later recalled: “...when I think what he went thro on that awful journey back from Turin with his injuries and pain, I just die inside, bless him—such a story of valiant and enduring courage one will never know again—and in many ways, knowing how he was injured, after the first shock—I was glad he went into the sea with his beloved Stirling – H for Harry.” Winston Churchill famously lauded the young men of the RAF in fending off the Luftwaffe and the threat to Britain when he declared that “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” The Battle of Britain was a decisive event in the war against Nazi Germany. For if Hitler had succeeded in invading Britain, all of Europe would have fallen under Nazi domination with its ideology of racial superiority and death camps. Strategically, the British Isles would no longer have been available from which to mount the counter invasion of Europe by Allied ground forces which took place in June 1944, resulting in the eventual destruction of the Nazi regime. The Battle of Britain was further decisive in helping persuade American public opinion that the British and their Empire were determined to maintain the fight against Germany and thereby justify America supplying Britain with crucial war materiel , until the United States itself entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, a German ally, in 1941 (section 8). The bombing of Germany by the RAF, and later by the Americans, also played a key role in slowing German armaments production and forcing Nazi leaders to divert resources and manpower that were badly needed on the war front. But the extent of the bombing was not without controversy. While many English civilians had been killed by German air raids, far larger numbers of German civilians, including children, died as a result of Allied bombing. Estimates of the number of German citizens killed range from around 350,000 to 500,000—a reminder that war is often indiscriminate.

All Hallows Church, Barking, in London, as restored after its bombing during the Blitz.

Paul Murray

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