Group Captain John Hemingway obituary: last of Churchill’s ‘Few’ dies at 105

Group Captain John Hemingway, an Irishman known to his fellow RAF pilots as “Paddy”, was extremely lucky to emerge unscathed from the war, having been shot down four times, including twice in two weeks during the Battle of Britain. A modest, brave man, he never liked to be thought of as a hero and hated people thanking him for his wartime service. In one of his last interviews he said that he had lived through extraordinary times but did not see himself as exceptional in any way. “I’m alive because of luck,” he said. “This is not false modesty,” he continued. “It was a characteristic of those times and the culture of my squadron to be resolute, realistic and not to dramatise those very dramatic