Dennis Bishop joined the RAF in 1942 and served across Europe and Africa (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
Dennis Bishop cannot understand why so many people want to speak to him. The 99-year-old former World War Two Ground Radio Operator has lived a quiet life since his service in the RAF, choosing relative anonymity with his wife and two children in the Oxfordshire countryside.
He stands aboard a modern RAF cargo plane, ready to deliver troops to the battles of the future, but it is the battles of the past which reporters have flocked to an RAF base in Oxford to hear about. He is small in stature but large in heart, constantly refusing the attempts of worried minders to get him to take a seat, preferring instead to stand tall in the midday sun to recount his wartime exploits. He tells reporters: “It is overwhelming, I didn’t expect any of this, I am a nobody.”
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Dennis is treated like royalty by those still serving in the RAF (Image: PA)
Few others, if any, would describe the elderly man standing in front of them on the back of an RAF aircraft as a “nobody,” but his humility is a common trait amongst many of the heroes who remain.
Dennis addresses reporters from the back of an A400 M aircraft on a runway at RAF Brize Norton, the British military’s largest airport used to transport troops into theatres across the globe.
All around us is a demonstration of airpower, with the Voyager KC3, the aircraft tasked with transporting the Prime Minister and Royal Family across the globe, flanked by enormous RAF cargo planes.
The high-tech jets possess state-of-the-art equipment that Dennis could only have imagined during the war as he expertly used Morse code to communicate with friendly forces on the ground during daring missions over Nazi-occupied territory.
Supported only by a cane, the Oxfordshire native, who saw action in France, Belgium, Germany and Africa remembers vividly hearing that the war was won and that peace was possible.
On hearing the news of the German surrender, Dennis recalls: “I was instantly thinking about coming home.
“I was in Germany, in a place called Detmold and I just wanted peace and I just wanted to come home.
“When I finally arrived home after travelling the world, I came home, I got off the bus, it was about 7 o’clock in the morning, I put my suitcase down and I kissed the ground and I said, ‘I am home’.”
Having joined the RAF in 1942, the teenage Dennis served as a Ground Radio Operator (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
Dennis joined the RAF in 1942 at 17 years of age, as the conflict intensified following the Battle of Britain and the horrors being faced by aircrew were well known.
He said: “I remember when the war started and all of a sudden we had to carry around a gas mask and we had to switch the lights off and pull the curtains and night time.
“I joined up with the Air Training Corps because I was interested in flying and was there until I got called up by the RAF and then obviously, I went to war.”
83 years since he first walked into an Oxfordshire military camp, Dennis has returned to meet those leading the RAF’s main contribution to next week’s commemoration, but in reality it is they who are more excited to meet him.
Dennis and millions more like him fought and died in a war to end all wars but as we prepare to remember victory in Europe, we do so with the backdrop of conflict on the continent as a result of an expansionist power under an exaggerated historical context.
The similarities are evident and it is a subject that Dennis is keen to highlight.
He said: “Some people have very good memories of VE day, but what I was glad about was peace between countries, it was a war which should never have started in the first place and should not be happening now.
“There are too many people competing for power, what is the matter with them? Why do they want more land? We should share it all, not confiscate it but enjoy it.
“It makes me feel disgusted, ordinary people do not want wars like this, it is their leaders who want greed and money.”
Wing Commander Nic Lofthouse will lead the RAF’s flypast over Buckingham Palace on VE Day (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
On May 8, millions of people across the world will reflect on the 80th anniversary of the end of hostilities in Europe following the German surrender.
Veterans of the conflict are becoming fewer in numbers and their experiences largely resigned to history books. It is perhaps this that makes the upcoming remembrance even more poignant.
Wing Commander (Wng Cmdr) Nichola Lofthouse is the officer in charge of 99 Squadron, tasked with conducting a huge fly past over Buckingham Palace, which will play a large part in the country’s remembrance and thanks.
She said: “It is always an honour to do ceremonial things like VE Day 80 and for us it is important to remember the sacrifice of those in the military who went before us.
“For example, 99 Squadron served in World War Two with the Wellington Bomber so we will certainly be remembering our colleagues of the past as we do the fly past.”
The fly past requires military precision on a scale few will appreciate as the spectacle roars across London above excited crowds, but the importance of success is not lost on Wng Cmdr Lofthouse.
She added: “We will all launch at different times and form up over the North Sea.
“Then, based on a time on target, we will slowly fall into formation, all at different ground speeds to ensure we are on time over the palace within plus or minus five seconds.”
Dennis walks among the current crop of pilots and aircrew like royalty, not that his humility would allow him to acknowledge his right to do so.
Winston Churchill once remarked of the RAF’s exploits that “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
On May 8, 99 Squadron and the world have the opportunity to give one final thanks to Dennis and the few who remain.