The memorial standing on the western boundary of the wartime airfield of Holmsley South sprang from the desire to commemorate all those people who had served on the New Forest airfields during and immediately after the Second World War.
The twelve airfields of the New Forest area played an important part in securing the eventual victory, and with the coming of peace, in bringing home thousands of prisoners-of-war and service personnel, and opening up the new air routes across the globe, which we use today as a matter of course. They were involved in every aspect of air warfare from research and development, training, flying on both defensive and offensive missions and supporting the operations of secret agents and Resistance Organisations in occupied Europe.
Many younger people have no conception of what was happening in the area all those years ago, yet what occurred then helped in no small way to secure the freedom we enjoy and take for granted today. Had the War been lost, Great Britain would have become part of the Third Reich, a vassal state, with slavery, concentration camps, murder, torture and intimidation being everyday features of life, as they were in those countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany at that time. Our wartime leaders would have been executed by Hitler’s Nazis.