![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.adrants.com\/images\/Trafalgar_Square_Turfed\/images\/69_trafalgar_square.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTrafalgar Square in London is one of London’s great memorials. \u00a0The tribute to Lord Nelson and his epic naval victory at Trafalgar is one of the signature sites in one of the world’s great cities. <\/p>\n
The square has a series of \u00a0“plinths” – the technical term for statue-stands. \u00a0Three of them are occupied by statues of King George IV, Henry Havelock and Sir Charles Napier. The fourth of the plinths<\/a>, built in 1841, has never been permanently occupied by a statue. \u00a0Over the years, it’s been the scene of stunts, demonstrations, and often occupied by temporary statues, some of them debuting on the plinth before being put in their permanent locations. \u00a0Some of them were of genuine British heroes; others, during the reight of London’s longtime socialist wackjob mayor wackjob mayor Ken Livingstone, were more, er, unconventional.<\/p>\n But the latest occupant of the Fourth Plinth is a statue of a hero that is someone obscure to Britons, and even moreso to Americans – even though he played an absolutely crucial role in the survival of western civilization seventy years ago.<\/p>\n It’s Air Vice Marshal Keith Park<\/a>, a New Zealander who commanded the Royal Air Force’s “11 Group”, the fighters responsible for defending London and southeast England during the Battle of Britain. \u00a0 Had 11 Group failed in its mission, Hitler would have won air superiority over the English Channel and the southwest of the UK. \u00a0It would have cleared the way for an invasion of the UK which, given the British Army’s badly-depleted state after Dunkirk, would likely have led to a Nazi victory in World War II.<\/p>\n The picture shows him in a fairly typical pose, pulling on one of his flight gloves as he got ready to climb into his personal Hawker Hurricane to keep up the relentless schedule of touring his airfields, checking up on his men, the hundreds of 20-25 year old pilots that died by the score, but saved the day for the UK and, incidentally, all of us.<\/p>\n I don’t know if it’s accurate to call Mary Wakefield, columnist for the London Independent, any more or less knowledgeable about history than any other “journalist”, here or there. \u00a0I don’t know if her knowledge of history is any more addled than that of any other Briton or American. \u00a0I don’t know if her giggly, show-biz-centered “mind” is any more \u00a0or less acute than that of any of the other bobbleheads in our “gatekeeping” class.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i.thisislondon.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2009\/05\/park-statue-415x600.jpg\")
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