![]() The Times reported in his obituary: “he became a legend by embodying the heroism of the RAF during the World War II”. He himself was given a Knighthood in 1976 to honour his work on behalf of the disabled community, 8 years before his death in 1982. Bader returned to Saint-Omer in 1965 to see Madame Hiecque receive the Legion d’Honneur. The Hiecque family and the nurse who helped Bader were sentenced to execution, commuted to hard labour. Bader’s story was told in the book and film Reach for the Sky. ![]() Recaptured, and several escape attempts later, he was finally sent to the notorious Colditz Prisoner-of-War camp, where the Germans, weary of the extraordinary British airman’s escapades, confiscated one of his legs until he promised not to try to escape any more. He was sheltered by the Hiecque family in rue du Haut-Pont in Saint-Omer. Such was Bader’s reputation that he managed to persuade his German captors to allow a replacement to be delivered by air and when they agreed to not shoot the delivery plane down, the leg was dropped in a box and handed over.īader, with the help of a French nurse, promptly escaped out of a window at the hospital, shimmying down the wall with help of bed sheets knotted together. Taken prisoner, he was sent to hospital in rue St Bertin, Saint Omer. ![]() On Augduring a strike over Saint-Omer, Bader’s plane was hit and he had to bail out, losing one of his tin legs in the process, landing in what is now an agricultural field. It didn’t stop him from enlisting in the RAF and becoming an “Ace” pilot. He had lost both legs in 1931 in a demonstration of aviation acrobatics. It was close by that in 1941, Douglas Bader flew over the Saint Omer along with dozens of British aircraft. In World War II, the airfield at Longuenesse was once more pressed into action, this time the German forces occupied the land making it a target for the RAF. Poignantly, opposite the airfield is the immaculately maintained Commonwealth War Graves Longuenesse Cemetery, the last resting place of many air force personnel. Today there is a memorial at the airfield which reads “PER ADUA AD ASTRA”, Latin for “through hardship to the stars”, the motto of the RAF. It was also the site of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) HQ which became the RAF, Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918 and it’s this that makes Saint-Omer the spiritual home of the world’s first air force. More flights took off from here than anywhere else in France. For most of World War I, it was a British airfield with a base of 4000 personnel. It was the location of one of the earliest air shows in 1910. The Birth of the RAF in Saint-OmerĪt Longuenesse on the outskirts of Saint Omer, there is a small aerodrome set among the grassy fields of the countryside of Pas de Calais. It is also where aviation history was made in several ways, including as the symbolic home of Britain’s RAF.Īnd, it’s where Douglas Bader, hero of the RAF in WWII was shot down, escaped from his captors and was sheltered in the town where he is remembered and honoured with a Douglas Bader trail tour. Centuries later, three of America’s Founding Fathers, Daniel, Charles and John Carroll, studied at the Jesuit Chapel. Thomas a Becket AKA Saint Thomas Becket took refuge from Henry II of England in there in 1165. Saint Omer in Nord, Hauts de France is a quintessentially French market town.
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