On May 1958,
Robert W. Service received a book specially signed by a fellow countryman named
Douglas Bader.
The book was telling an incredible biography, his proper story of
a man discharged from the RAF at 21 after losing both legs in his airplane
crash. His love to fly was stronger than his disability and he quickly proved
he could still pilot a plane.
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| Schloss Colditz |
With the
outbreak of 1939, he fought his way back to become one of the great heroes of
the Battle of Britain. With artificial legs, he won several areal battles at
the head of five squadrons.
In 1941, Bader
bailed out over France where he is captured. After having escaped repeatedly from
several camps, Douglas Bader is jailed into a high security prisoner of war
camp near Leipzig: Colditz. There, the officers confiscated his artificial limb
in order to be sure he would not escape again.
Prisoner of this
rocky outcrop camp during three years, Douglas could count on his wife Thelma
who sent him parcels containing volumes of poetry that he read nearly every day.
“If the past called too hurtfully he found another
answer from Robert W. Service:
Have ever you stood where the silences brood,
And vast the horizons begin,
At the dawn of the day to behold far away
The goal you would strive for and win?
Yet ah! in the night when you gain to the height,
With the vast pool of heaven star-spawned,
Afar and agleam, like a valley of dream,
Still mocks you the Land of Beyond.
(Till the day he dies he will remember each word of
those pages and more.)
Reach for the Sky, Paul Brickhill
Douglas Bader
quoted an extract from The Land of Beyond published in Rhymes of a Rolling
Stone, a poem particularly inspiring for an aviator.
Douglas Bader remained in Colditz until the arrival of the US troops in
April 1945.
The dedication
written by Douglas Bader is a great tribute to Robert Service.
“To Robert Service,
With warmest regards and
thanks for the many hours of continuing pleasure the reading of your verses
gives me.
From
Douglas Bader”
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