A Battle of Britain veteran has been the inspiration for a special blend of tea brewed to honour 'The Few', with some of the proceeds going to the RAF Association Wings Appeal.

Terry Clark drinks a cup of the tea blended to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain
[Picture: Newsquest/The Press, York, 2010]

Battle of Britain veteran inspires special blend of charity tea

A History and Honour news article

1 Oct 10

Terry Clark, aged 91, was an air gunner in a Blenheim light bomber aircraft, used as a night fighter, during the Battle of Britain. His initial job was to defend York and the surrounding airfields from German attacks.

He joined the Auxiliary Air Force at the age of 19, training in Surrey and on the Isle of Man. He said:

"The station commander signed my log book but nobody said whether I'd passed the course. I assume I must have done because they sent me off to join 219 Squadron, a Blenheim fighter unit based at Catterick."

Mr Clark and his squadron mates spent much of the Battle of Britain quietly playing pontoon as they waited for a call to arms. But the silence was shattered when the phone rang - it was the signal to scramble. A couple of flicked switches fired up the Blenheims and within minutes crews were airborne:

"Spitfire pilots couldn't see in the dark, but we could," he said. "Blenheims carried an early form of radar which at the time was unknown to the Germans. We also had ground control radar which was used to get us to the main body of the bombers. But while it could see the big picture, it was down to us to identify the individual aircraft with our radar before opening fire."

[...]

Mr Clark becoming the inspiration for a new blend of tea came about when Henrietta Lovell, of the Rare Tea Company, met him last year while shooting a video and was so taken by his presence that she decided to prepare the 'Tea for Heroes'.

On the label for her latest blend Henrietta has written:

"I first created this tea for a wonderful man called Terry Clark. It was a great honour to make tea for him and he thought it was rather good."

'Tea for Heroes' is a traditional British tea, a blend from two plantations, the Makaibari Estate in Darjeeling and the Satemwa Estate in Malawi, and comes in a presentation tin bearing the RAF roundel. Inside, the label features a wartime picture of Mr Clark wearing his uniform. He said:

"When Henrietta asked if she could use my photo, I wasn't too sure. But when she told me that some of the proceeds would go to the Wings Appeal, I thought well why not.

"It's a very good brew and far better than the wartime tea we had in the NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes]."..

Mr Clark has much more to say. I'd go and have a cuppa with him, listen to his stories, any day! This a great article. Go read the rest here.

"Never was so much owed by so many to so few..."

Battle of Britain: Churchill's 'few' remembered

By Channel 4 News

Updated on 20 August 2010

As a ceremony marks 70 years since Winston Churchill famously spoke of the "few" fighting for the Battle of Britain, historian Richard Overy tells Channel 4 News the words captured the spirit of the nation.

The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain will be marked today by a reading of the speech and a flypast outside the Churchill War Rooms in central London.

Churchill's stirring "so much owed by so many to so few" address will be read at 3.52pm - exactly 70 years after the wartime prime minister delivered it in parliament.

[...]

More than 2,900 British, Commonwealth and Allied aircrew took part and successfully fought off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain which began on July 10 1940 and ended on October 31 that year. The triumph helped wreck Hitler's plans to invade Britain and is believed to have laid the foundations for Allied victory five years later.

In a speech on 20 August 1940, Churchill told MPs: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Author and historian Prof Richard Overy told Channel 4 News that the Churchill's phrase encapsulated the "myth of the battle" which still resonates today.

"At the time Churchill didn’t expect the impact [of the words] at all," he said.

"The phrase caught the imagination and immediately people took it up as a way of describing a David v Goliath view of RAF fighter command.

"I think really people were looking for language to describe how they saw the battle and these few lines somehow captured that spirit."..

(More very interesting info on Channel4 here)

More background: here and here.

Dame Vera Lynn, whose songs did so much to lift the morale of Britons during the war, was also at the event.

She said of Churchill's speech: "He was talking about a collection of very brave chaps and we are all grateful and thankful that we had them at the time.

"It's right and proper that we should always remember them. They were a few but they did a fantastic, big job." (here)[emphasis mine]

And speaking of Vera Lynn?

ALWAYS remembered and honoured.....