While on vacation in England, my friends and I stopped at a bed and breakfast in the picturesque town of St. Columbe Major in Cornwall. The home resembled a modified castle, and the family could have been cast in a film featuring an upper middle class British family. The younger daughter greeted us with the announcement “My sister is the Queen of St. Columbe Major.” She was a delightful little girl but seemed a bit off. Then we met her older sister and learned that this sister was indeed the Queen of St. Columbe Major, having won a beauty contest to earn that title.
The father was a pilot for BOAC airlines and mentioned in passing that he had been in the RAF. Later we put his dates of service in perspective and realized that he must have participated in the Battle of Britain. Only later did further study and appreciation of that time period leave me with a sense of awe. I had met one of the indomitable “Few” celebrated by Winston Churchill with the immortal lines: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
