Even those who stand to attention on Remembrance Sunday and hear the incantation of familiar phrases may sometimes need to have memories refreshed about how individual members of our community once met a challenge that demanded supreme courage. The Egremont Branch of the Royal British Legion did the town a service by telling us exactly what the late Dr Courtney Willey did at 13.00 on 18th August 1940 when Tangmere Airbase, the most westerly of the bases defending London, was attacked by the Luftwaffe and the medical station in which he served suffered a direct hit. As soon as the attack began he got all his patients to shelter and stayed to attend to one wounded airman who could not move. He was buried to the waist in rubble when the bomb fell on his unit, but still dragged himself clear and set to work establishing an emergency sick bay, which was ready for service that same evening. The survival of Tangmere as an operational base was a turning point in the Battle of Britain. Later he was transferred to Singapore where he became a prisoner of war in a notorious Japanese labour camp, where he and John Simpson were the only two doctors to attend to thousands of fellow prisoners.
The moving ceremony in the Legion on the afternoon of Remembrance Sunday challenged the comfort and security of our own lives. How can we imagine such courageous reactions and such endurance? Courtney's widow, Muriel, daughter, Caroline and son, Peter, were there to attend the unveiling of replicas of his medals and the citation, which was read by Flying Officer Stuart Dunnet. They have a place of honour between the medals and citation to the late Dr Jack Strain, who rescued his comrade from a crashed plane during the Battle of Alamain, and Lenny Wells, a sixteen year old farm hand in 1942, who rushed to pull a pilot from a blazing plane that had crashed in the field where he was working, suffering such horrific burns in the rescue that he was never able to serve in military duty.
We need to make sure that these particular memories are never buried in familiar ritual. Shortly before his death, Dr Willey gave us the great honour of talking to Egremont Today in detail about the raid on Tangmere, the conditions in the Japanese camp, and his pioneering work with John Simpson in establishing West Cumberland Hospital. All three of these articles can still be read on our website, www.egremont-today.com accessible directly from the index page.
Our photo shows Muriel, Peter and Caroline at the unveiling of Dr Willey’s medals and citation, and left, Courtney Willey as a young airman.