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A Swindon hero

Sdn Ldr Harold Starr, one of ‘The Few’

The Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel-le-Ferne, Kent, where Harold Starr and the rest of The Few are honoured

The summer edition of Swindon When Winston Churchill made his famous line at RAF Kenley on August 29. It was the
Heritage takes a detailed speech about the Battle of Britain in August proverbial baptism of fire for him and his
look at the story of 1940, victory was far from won, but he already squadron comrades, including Colin Francis,
who was killed on the squadron’s first day of
understood its significance to not just his own
Sdn Ldr Harold Starr – and with generation, but to ours. combat, August 30, aged just 19.
good reason. Swindon has been “Never in the field of human conflict,” said Harold was to survive just one day longer.
Early on the morning of August 31, his
chosen to host a spectacular flypast our Second World War leader, “was so much Hurricane was hit and he bailed out at 15,000
owed by so many to so few.”
in September that will honour Harold ‘The Few’ – those RAF pilots killed in the feet, only to be machine-gunned by enemy
and the other 543 RAF pilots killed battle – were eventually to number 544 as the fighters as he descended in his parachute.
in the Battle of Britain. In a four-page vital struggle for aerial supremacy with the He was dead before he hit the ground, just a
special, Graham Carter, editor of German Luftwaffe began on July 10 and lasted few miles from the white cliffs of Dover, over
all summer.
Sandwich. His plane came down five miles
Swindon Heritage, reveals stories It was October before the battle was over, but away.
behind this local hero the tide had turned by September 15, when, in Harold Starr was buried on September 6, two
a make-or-break confrontation with the enemy, days short of his 26th birthday, and just eight
every Spitfire and Hurricane was in the air. But months after his marriage to a Welsh girl, Betty
still The Few stood firm. Rees, who was carrying their first child.
Everybody knew the stakes, including Hitler, After a funeral at Christ Church, he was
who, just two days later, cancelled Operation buried at Radnor Street Cemetery – one of 103
Sea Lion, his plan to invade Britain. official war graves there.
Had it not been for The Few, invasion was This year the grave will be one of the main
inevitable, and the consequences for the whole focuses of events commemorating the 75th
population of the United Kingdom would anniversary of The Few’s sacrifice.
almost certainly have been catastrophic. On Battle of Britain Day itself, September
It would be easy to argue that it was, in fact, 15, the RAF’s Battle of Britain Memorial
the most important single victory in Britain’s Flight will honour Harold and his comrades by
military history – and Swindon should be proud performing a flypast over his grave.
that, among The Few, was a local man. The exact formation is yet to be confirmed,
Harold Starr was born in Swindon in 1914, but Swindon Heritage, who requested it, have
at 39 Regent Street, in what was then a been told it will be ‘spectacular’ and ‘unique’.
temperance hotel run by his mother, and is A week of events leading up to the day, called
now the site of The Savoy – once a cinema, Swindon Remembers, has been organised (see
now a pub. Harold, a gifted former Clarence page 26).
Street Schoolboy who rose rapidly through The full story of Harold’s and his comrades’
the ranks, took control of 253 Squadron on heroism is told in the summer edition of
August 8, 1940, and led them into the front Swindon Heritage.

This 4 page preview of Swindon Remembers
Find out more at www.swindonheritage.com is published in partnership with
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