Medals Anyone?
January 12, 2015
IN the post about RAF Wing Commander Nikki Thomas, James P. writes:
She looks ridiculous. The narrow shoulders, the ill-fitting suit, the oversize medals (awarded for what?) that remind me of Leonid Brezhnev, the hat that makes her look like she should be handing out parking tickets. Much of it is “not her fault” in the sense that her physique is what it is, and she wears the uniform the military prescribes for her. Still, she chose to put herself where she is, and I have no doubt she would aggressively insist she has every right to be there, no matter what the cost to the RAF and the nation.
— Comments —
Pete writes:
Your feature, “Medals Anyone?” would have angered me five years ago, but I have learned to laugh a bit at the utter foolishness of our fellow human beings. Does Wing Commander Nikki Thomas know how ridiculous she looks – like a girl who has found her father’s uniform and is playing dress-up with it?
As a historian, I tend to view daily life through the prism of the past. As a child, my interest in history was sparked in part by reading paperback books on the Second World War. I was intensely interested in exploits of fighter pilots, especially the “aces” or experts who managed to shoot down numerous enemy aircraft. I am certain that I am far-from-being the only boy from that time (I am in my fifties now) with an interest in WWII fighter aces, the Battle of Britain, and so forth. The names of the British & Commonwealth aces come easily to mind… Robert Sanford Tuck, Douglas Bader, A.G. “Sailor” Malan, “Ginger” Lacey, George Beurling, and many others. Many of these men were among those immortalized by Prime Minister Churchill’s famous speech paying tribute to “The Few” who saved Great Britain from invasion by the Nazi hordes during the desperate air battles fought over southern England in the summer and early fall of 1940.
These were serious and tough men, but they had great joie de vivre and tremendous espirit de corps considering that many of them knew that they might not survive to see the next week. There was even a chivalry of sorts amongst the opposing fighter pilots of the RAF and Luftwaffe. Wing Commander Douglas Bader had lost both of his legs in a pre-war aerobatics accident, and flew with prosthetic legs during the war. When he was shot down over occupied France and taken prisoner by the Germans in August, 1941, he was left without his artificial legs. Arrangements were made, and a new set of prosthetics were parachute-dropped to Bader, with his captors cooperation and approval. Bader survived the war and became a much-revered national hero before his death in 1982.
In short, Bader, Tuck, Malan and their comrades were consequential men in consequential times. Their achievements have justly earned them a place in the history books. With all due respects to Wing Commander Thomas – who may very well be a sterling human being in many ways – what has she done to merit her place in the RAF, let alone all of those medals and a rank comparable to that of the legendary Douglas Bader?
The reality is that Wing Commander Thomas isn’t even defending Great Britain. No nation threatens the British Isles with invasion; the RAF has no aerial enemies with whom to engage in combat. All of Britain’s recent wars have been irregular conflicts in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and neither of those nations posed much of a threat to the air superiority of NATO forces. One is left to wonder where she got her medals…. perhaps for running a well-done workshop on diversity or maybe for delivering a good power point briefing.
The supreme irony, of course, is that while the British elites have been congratulating themselves on elevating women to such positions, they have been leaving their nation more-or-less defenseless against the Islamic hordes who are now conquering it from within, via immigration and the “jihad of the cradle.” Somehow, one doubts that the enemies of our civilization – whoever they are – will be much-impressed by Ms. Thomas – who looks about as imposing as a cream puff. Maybe we’ll get lucky when the balloon goes up and we find ourselves in a real shooting war…. perhaps our enemies will laugh themselves to death at the sight of how ridiculous we’ve become.
If nothing else, a then-versus-now comparison makes for an interesting and highly-instructive microcosm of the decay and corruption of the western world. Then – Douglas Bader. Now – Nikki Thomas. The reader will draw his/her own conclusions.
