The monument to the pilots of the Battle of Britain was dedicated in 1993. It's a grassy knoll overlooking the English Channel on the next set of cliffs down coast from Dover. They put a circle with 3 propellors laid out around it; think of looking headon at the nose of a fighter plane and that's what is represented.
In the middle of the circle up a few steps is a larger than life statue of a pilot sitting on the ground watching the sky and waiting for the planes to come home.
Behind the pilot about 20 feet was a lifesize statue of a golden retriever. And he's watching the sky too with an anxious but hopeful face. The artist so well captured the spirit of a dog like that; it makes you really want to see the pilots return because the dog is so faithfully waiting.
Off to one side of these statues they have a long memorial wall on which the names of 3,000 members of the crews from the Battle of Britain are inscribed. Several of us looked for the names of someone they knew who had participated in the Battle. On the other side of the memorial were replicas of the two planes used by the RAF in the Battle.
Our day was sunny, mild, gentle breezes, absolutely gorgeous. It's one of those days that is so absolutely gorgeous that the thought of all the mayhem and anguish that we were hearing about just seems not to belong in the world at all.
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