Plot
In May 1940, as German forces sweep across France and Belgium, the remains of the Belgian Air Force are bottled up near the Flemish coast and billeted at a farm in the Flemish countryside. Ordered by their government to surrender, the commander gives orders that the regimental colours be honourably buried, rather than surrendered to the invaders. The few pilots with serviceable aeroplanes fly to England to join the Allied air forces, while those remaining are forced to surrender.
Six months later, after fighting in the Battle of Britain, Jean Duclos, now a squadron leader, is persuaded by a fellow officer to return with him to retrieve the colours. The latter is killed before he can leave, and Duclos persuades the authorities to parachute him into Belgium. He contacts his former commanding officer, now living as a civilian in Ghent and secretly operating a resistance group feeding intelligence to the Allies. Provided with a false identity and a cover story, Duclos returns to the farm, where his late colleague's wife and child still live. She is initially unwilling to reveal where the colours are buried, believing that they are not worth dying for. But she relents and the colours are retrieved.
Duclos must now travel through several hundred miles of dangerous and heavily guarded country to reach neutral Spain, from where he returns to England. On his return, the colours are paraded and formally re-presented to the Belgian Air Force.
In military organizations, a colour guard is a detachment of soldiers assigned to the protection of regimental colours and the national flag. This duty is highly prestigious, and the military colour is generally carried by a young officer (ensign), while experienced non-commissioned officers are assigned to the protection of the national flag. These non-commissioned officers, accompanied in several countries by warrant officers, can be ceremonially armed with either sabres or rifles to protect the colour. Colour guards are generally dismounted, but there are also mounted colour guard formations as well.
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Clifford George Evans was a Welsh actor.
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Chelfham Viaduct is a railway viaduct built in 1896–97 to carry the single track, narrow-gauge Lynton and Barnstaple Railway (L&B) across the Stoke Rivers valley. Designed by L&B engineer, FW Chanter, and containing over a quarter of a million Marland bricks, its eight arches - each 42 feet (13 m) wide and 70 feet (21 m) high - meaning that the 132-yard (121 m)-long viaduct is the largest narrow gauge railway structure in England. Chelfham Viaduct was Bridge number 22 of the 80 that carried or spanned the railway over its 19-mile (31 km) length. The viaduct was classified as a Grade II listed structure on 25 February 1965.
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The air forces of the United Kingdom – the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, the Army's Army Air Corps and the Royal Air Force use a roundel, a circular identification mark, painted on aircraft to identify them to other aircraft and ground forces. In one form or another, it has been used on British military aircraft from 1915 to the present.
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Royal Air Force Mount Farm, or more simply RAF Mount Farm, is a former Royal Air Force station located 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Dorchester, Oxfordshire, England.
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The Free Belgian forces were soldiers from Belgium and its colonies who fought as part of the Allied armies during World War II, after the official Belgian surrender to Nazi Germany. It is distinct from the Belgian Resistance which existed in German-occupied Belgium.
349th Squadron is a fighter squadron in the Air Component of the Belgian Armed Forces. The squadron traces its origins to No. 349 (Belgian) Squadron of the Royal Air Force, founded in 1942 as part of the Free Belgian forces during World War II. It was transferred to the re-established Belgian Air Force in 1946, together with 350th Squadron. Considered an "honorary" squadron, it retained its original name and numbering and has been flying under the Belgian flag ever since. Today it is part of the 10th Tactical Wing, operating the F-16 Fighting Falcon from Kleine Brogel airbase.
No. 98 Squadron was a Royal Air Force bomber squadron during World War I and World War II. It flew fighter-bombers post-war, and converted to fighters in 1955. Reformed as a ballistic missile unit between 1959 and 1963, its final incarnation was as a radar calibration unit. It was disbanded in 1976.
The Story of a Flemish Farm is an orchestral suite by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on the score for the 1943 film The Flemish Farm - a wartime drama set in occupied Europe, and written when Vaughan Williams was 70.
This is a summary of 1943 in music in the United Kingdom.
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