Last survivor of The Few

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

The only surviving pilot to fight in the Battle of Britain is “the lucky Irishman,” his son has said, after his last fellow comrade died just a few hours before VE-Day.

John Hemingway, who turns 101 in July, has become the last living fighter pilot of the group of men Winston Churchill called “The Few,” a group of 3,000 fighter pilots who saved Britain from Nazi invasion when they defended the skies in the Battle of Britain against the Luftwaffe in 1940.

It was announced on the morning of anniversary of VE-Day Friday that Terry Clark, an air gunner with the 219 Squadron, had died the night before, aged 101.

More than 500 RAF pilots and aircrew were killed in the Battle of Britain, which led Churchill to declare “Never was so much owed by so many to so few” in a speech that summer.

Hemingway’s son, Brian, said his father, a fighter pilot in the 85 Squadron who now lives in a care home in Dublin, “sees himself as a symbol of everyone’s heroism and commitment to the war.”

During the war Hemingway was shot down four times and was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.

“They called him the lucky Irishman,” his son said.

Hemingway added that at the age of 100 his father’s luck was yet to run out. “He feels lucky because he is well cared for in his nursing home, he is loved and not forgotten,” he said.

Asked once what his secret to a long life was, Hemingway said: “I can’t say don’t drink. I can’t say don’t fool about with people. I can’t say don’t fly airplanes. I can’t say don’t shoot and get shot at — I’ve done everything, and I’m an Irishman. The only advice I can give to people is to be Irish.”