BATTLE OF BRITAIN ‘LACE’
More than forty years of Battle of Britain commemoration in Hobart closed at the Cenotaph on Sunday, where the National Vice President of the Air Force Association turned her address from the pilots to the households that waited for them.
Wing Commander Deanna Nott delivered the Occasional Address at the wreath laying on 13 September, the final event of three days hosted by the RAAF Association’s Tasmania Division.
Her Excellency the Honourable Caroline Wells, Governor of Tasmania, attended and laid a wreath, as did Air Commodore Andrew McHugh, Commander Combat Support Group, representing the Chief of Air Force. Tasmanian Treasurer Eric Abetz, state and federal members, consular representatives and attachés from seven nations also laid wreaths. A Tiger Moth flew over the Domain at 11am, and two PC-21 Roulettes gave an aerial display at the close of the service.
The address, “The Ones Who Waited”, followed three Australian families through the summer of 1940. Among them were the Walches of Hobart, whose son Stuart, of the family that ran the Macquarie Street booksellers Walch and Sons, was lost off the English coast on 11 August 1940, aged 23. His body was never recovered.
“Some thirty Australians flew in those skies, and thirteen of them died during the battle itself,” Wing Commander Nott said. “But behind each of them stood parents, sisters, brothers, sweethearts and wives who endured the waiting and carried the grief for the rest of their lives. There were no medals for that, and no armistice for it either.”
She said the waiting had not ended with the Battle of Britain, and that Australian defence families were still doing it.
“The technology changes. The fear does not,” she said. “What those families endured in 1940, the six-week letters and the cables that arrived without warning, defence families endure still, in their own way, in Australian homes, even now. Every posting. Every deployment. Every long gap between calls. The Air Force Association exists, in no small part, for them.”
Wing Commander Nott is a serving Public Affairs Officer with thirty-two years in uniform.
The weekend opened on Friday with welcome drinks at the RAAF Memorial Centre, where guests were received by State President Wing Commander Jenny Robertson (Ret).
A commemorative service followed at St David’s Cathedral on Saturday afternoon, with the sermon by Chaplain (Group Captain) Cam Carroll and the Governor attending. Cadets took part in the service and in the ensign and flag party at the Dining-In Night that evening at the Elwick Function Centre, Glenorchy.
Commemorations concluded with a barbecue luncheon at the Memorial Centre.
WGCDR Nott paid tribute to the organising committee, chaired by Air Commodore Doug Chipman (Ret).
“It was an honour to be asked, and the Tasmania Division ran a weekend that did these families justice,” she said. “Much of what I was able to tell people came from the historian Kristen Alexander and her book Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain. It is still in print and worth seeking out.”
The full text of Wing Commander Nott’s address can be read here.
Pictures by John Delia and Deanna Nott
