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This image called “Terror From
5
the Skies. Wartime pilots and the
Battle of Britain” was the cover
artwork from Look and Learn, a
children’s magazine.
How is this portrayal of the
airmen similar to or different
from how Woolf portrays them?

Changing the World
Wartime pilots and the Battle of Britain Artist:Wood, Gerry (b.1938) / English. Terror From the Skies.Wartime pilots and the Battle of Britain. Original coverartwork from Look and Learn no. 652 (13 July 1974).©Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images

would honour them for their refusal to bear by trying to create. Since the room is dark it can
children. They would give them other openings create only from memory. It reaches out to the
for their creative power. That too must make part memory of other Augusts — in Bayreuth, listening
of our fight for freedom. We must help the young to Wagner; in Rome, walking over the Campagna;
Englishmen to root out from themselves the love in London. Friends’ voices come back. Scraps of
of medals and decorations. We must create more poetry return. Each of those thoughts, even in
honourable activities for those who try to conquer memory, was far more positive, reviving, healing,
in themselves their fighting instinct, their and creative than the dull dread made of fear and
subconscious Hitlerism. We must compensate the hate. Therefore if we are to compensate the young
man for the loss of his gun. man for the loss of his glory and of his gun, we
The sound of sawing overhead has increased. must give him access to the creative feelings. We
All the searchlights are erect. They point at a spot must make happiness. We must free him from the
exactly above this roof. At any moment a bomb machine. We must bring him out of his prison
may fall on this very room. One, two, three, four, into the open air. But what is the use of freeing the
five, six . . . .the seconds pass. The bomb did not young Englishman if the young German and the
fall. But during those seconds of suspense all young Italian remain slaves?
thinking stopped. All feeling, save one dull dread, The searchlights, wavering across the flat,
ceased. A nail fixed the whole being to one hard have picked up the plane now. From this window
board. The emotion of fear and of hate is therefore one can see a little silver insect turning and
sterile, unfertile. Directly that fear passes, the twisting in the light. The guns go pop pop pop.
mind reaches out and instinctively revives itself Then they cease. Probably the raider was brought
70
Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
Distributed by BFW Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.

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