Now known as Air Force Commemoration Day it is always observed on the nearest Sunday to September 15. That was the day when the battle reached its climax and Hitler was forced to cancel plans to invade England.
The Air Training Corps will mount the guard of honour, wreaths will be laid, prayers and a short address will be followed by the Last Post. It will be a familiar ritual, yet for a few of those present there will be an extra touch of poignancy. The Brevet Club of Otago has decided that it can no longer undertake the organising of this event.
Club members all wore wings on their tunics so this annual gathering has special significance for them. At its peak the club had about 150 members. Now there are 10 in Dunedin and three further afield. Some are in their 90s, some have chronic health problems, all feel that younger and fitter people should take responsibility for this remembrance parade.
A suggestion has been made that No 42 (Dunedin) Squadron of the ATC might accept the role. Its loyal support has long been a feature of the occasion. But the young people of the squadron already give up considerable time to the acquiring of skills, including navigating and gliding. Taking on an added burden would require very careful thought.
The Brevet Club does not plan to go into recess. It may eventually be a case of "Last out turn off the light" but the former aircrew, along with widows of those who have made their last landing, will still meet. They will also turn out to important parades in April, September and November. They just feel that they have done enough organising.
The load has been shared among members, but two people merit special mention. For years the Ven Neville Selwood, a former Vicar-General of the Diocese of Dunedin, has conducted the service at the cenotaph. He was a navigator in the famous 75 Squadron of Bomber Command. He took over from another club member, the Rev Bob Tate who had been a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm.
The Brevet Club had a forerunner known as the Prune Club. Pilot Officer Prune was the Royal Air Force's symbol of incompetence. If there was a wrong way to do anything, Prune would find it.
That club had no structure, but was simply a group of flying men who got together for a drink and a chat. It was a fun outfit.
Then a national organisation was set up and the Otago branch of the Federation of Brevet Clubs was formed. Some of the Prune Club chaps joined up, others were recruited and there were regular dinners, balls and sports events. Prominent in those years was cartoonist Sid Scales, whose drawings featured on invitations and letterheads.
Some members, including Scales, put much time and effort into raising funds for the splendid Air Force Museum at Wigram. The RNZAF showed its appreciation by sending a Friendship on a "training flight" to take five or six of us to Wigram for a preview. The writer still recalls that Sid Scales was ecstatic to find that the Harvard in which he trained was on display.
All Brevet Club members wear service medals but a number were decorated for gallantry. The first of them was John Mackenzie, who flew in the Battle of Britain. The last was David Laing. He won his Distinguished Flying Cross as a 21-year-old flying Wellington bombers on low-level reconnaissance ahead of the advancing Allied forces in Europe. David's son Peter runs the Leviathan Hotel, which has become the club's headquarters for meetings and social occasions.
There have also been civilian honours for club members and a number have been prominent in national and local affairs. Sir James Barnes and the Hon W. A. Fraser were political rivals, but Brevet Club colleagues.
Bill Fraser took the St Kilda seat from Jim Barnes in 1957 and went on to become Minister of Defence. Jim turned his attention to local body affairs and served three terms as Dunedin's mayor.
Their flying careers were also different. Bill Fraser was a pioneer member of the ATC, joined the RNZAF when he turned 18 and did two tours in the Pacific as an air gunner. Jim Barnes was an observer in a Wellington crew which was shot down over France in 1942. He was a prisoner for three years and was awarded an MBE for his work as a camp leader.
Dr J. A. Valentine, for years chancellor of the University of Otago, was a club member. He managed to fly out of Singapore when it was taken by the Japanese but was later captured and was a prisoner for years. He and Sid Scales first met as passengers in a Dakota when they were repatriated from Java.
Other club members have been prominent in a wide range of organisations including Rotary, the Peninsula Trust, the Justices Association, the Moray Foundation Trust, the Patients' and Prisoners' Aid Society and sporting clubs.
When they got together they could talk of times of terror and tension. Past members flew Spitfires over the Burma (Myanmar) jungle to photograph enemy activity, flew Hurricanes over Kent, Beaufighters above Norway, Lancasters over Berlin and Typhoons over France. But these things were rarely mentioned. One needed to go to a funeral to find out what had happened.
The strain of watching friends go down in flames, of being coned in searchlights, of nursing battered aircraft home, of ditchings, of crash-landings and of empty chairs in the mess - these were not discussed.
Conversation turned to fun in village pubs, visits to the Windmill Theatre in Soho, antics at mess parties, rugby matches and leave spent in pleasant places. One prominent member could refer to the time he met the King and Queen by chance and enjoyed a drink with them.
Today, all that is left of the Brevet Club of Otago is a handful of men (and one woman who flew with the RAF Reserve postwar) with volunteer service to remember.
In the last two or three years the Last Post has sounded for more and more members and the time will come when there is nobody left to listen.
But not yet.
There are still parades to attend, lunches to enjoy and memories to cherish.
He says there were as many as 15 brevet clubs through New Zealand at one time but their number has dwindled to about six or seven.
Mr Parry (born June 8, 1920) joined the territorial army in 1939 and then, in 1943, joined the RNZAF where he trained as a navigator.
His most dangerous moment was a crash-landing in Rutland when two Lancaster engines malfunctioned.
His greatest success during the war was a round of 72 at Holyhead Golf Club on the Welsh Isle of Anglesey.
His most enduring memory was flying at 20,000ft over Birmingham after VE Day and seeing the lights of London 60 miles away. The city had been dark for six years.
His most admired colleague was the bomb aimer in his crew. "He was a London Metropolitan policeman who was accurate, imperturbable and always knew where to get a drink when the pubs were shut."
Mr Parry started in journalism at Greymouth, at age 25 and worked for the Otago Daily Times from 1947 until 1964 - serving several years as chief reporter and then features editor. He has written 35 books and was the first information officer at the University of Otago.
He has one daughter, three grandchildren and (almost) two great-grandchildren.
- Mark Price
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN, 1940
July 10: The German Luftwaffe began attacking British convoys in the English Channel.
July 16: German chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered the preparation of a plan to invade Britain - "Operation Sealion".
August 1, 1940: Adolf Hitler decreed the German Air Force was to overcome the British Air Force "with all means at its disposal, and as soon as possible".
August 13: "Eagle Day". The Luftwaffe flew 1485 sorties against British coastal airfields.
August 18: "The Hardest Day" with the greatest number of casualties on both sides.
August 24-September 6: Germans attack RAF planes, airfields and radar in the critical period of the battle.
August 25: Britain's bomber command dispatched 81 bombers on the first raid on Berlin.
September 7: Nearly 400 German bombers, escorted by 600 fighters, made the first attack on London.
September 17: Hitler postponed "Operation Sealion".
Casualties:
• Britain - 544 aircrew killed, 422 wounded, 1547 aircraft destroyed.
• Germany - 2698 aircrew killed, 967 captured, 1887 aircraft destroyed.
• Total British civilian losses from July to December 1940 were 23,002 dead and 32,138 wounded.
• The Royal Air Force roll of honour for the Battle of Britain, totalling 2936, includes 127 New Zealanders.
CHURCHILL'S SPEECH
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Wednesday August 21, 1940, to the British parliament:
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. (Prolonged cheers.) All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often at serious loss, with deliberate, careful precision, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power." (Cheers, again.)
