The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

The Phony War and

the Battle of Britain

Children evacuated during the "Phony War"

July 22, 2009

What is now the convent at Our Lady of Fatima Church, used to be the rectory until 2004. When I lived there, my neighbor was a former World War II pilot during the "Finest hour" as Winston Churchill called it. Americans, and Floridians in particular, tend to be a pretty gregarious lot, very outgoing indeed. I tend to be stand-offish and people who meet me for the first time will find me quite cold and reserved. People who know me better know that I am shy by nature. I like seclusion, and it helps with a contemplative way of life as well. I recall a joke about the English told by an Irish actor in a film in which he said that they tell the story in Ireland of two Englishmen who were stranded together on a desert island who never spoke to one another because they hadn't been introduced ! Well you laugh, but that is a fact. I've lived in Spring Hill for almost 14 years and I've only spoken to my neighbor two or three times in all those years !

I see him frequently at a distance and I think of the sacrifice his generation made for freedom in the world and I am truly grateful for him and others that I am not now writing these words in German !

When Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939, for most people in the United Kingdom it seemed eerily as though there wasn't a war at all; they called this period back then the "phony war". People were kitted out with gas masks, children evacuated from cities to the country to people who took them in for the duration of hostilities, air raid shelters mushroomed everywhere, but absolutely nothing happened. It all seemed unreal.

Then it happened, a lightning panzer attack through the Ardennes, Guderian by-passed the Maginot line and the British and French troops, hopelessly outclassed were pushed back to Dunkirk. Next the Luftwaffe turned its attention to the Royal Air Force (RAF) and pounded the airfields. The Germans were on the verge of air superiority since the British were unable to repair the airfields fast enough. Then it happened: Britain bombed Berlin, and in a rage Hitler made the biggest blunder of the war - it literally cost him the invasion of Britain - the Germans switched their bombing runs to London in revenge, convinced that a final push would cause the capitulation they were seeking. Military experts believe that if the Germans would have continued pounding the airfields just 3 more days and Britain would have been finished militarily speaking.

As for the blitz in London, with the King and Queen firmly committed to remaining with their subjects they continued their resistance and the rest is history. All this goes to show is that a phony war leads to strife and that a delay or change in plans can indeed be catastrophic.

+TF