THE DEBT WE OWE, THE ROYAL AIR FORCE BENEVOLENT FUND 1919 – 1989

 Edward Bishop, Airlife 1989.

Seventy years on from it’s founding (at 1989), the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund is set to spend more than £8.5 million on the relief distress - yet another year’s repayment of what Sir Winston Churchill described as ’the debt we owe to the paladins of the Royal Air Force’. From now on, as survivors of the Second World War grow older, the Fund will spend even greater sums on assistance.

The story of the founding of the Royal Air Force Lord Trenchard, it’s struggle between the wars and its accelerating surge forward to the Royal Air force as the granite memorial which the Prince of Wales unveiled in 1923 on the Victoria Embankment, near Westminster.

Edward Bishop’s book combines the inspiring story of the growth of the RAF Benevolent Fund with an account of it’s aims and it’s work. He demonstrates, for example, how the fund has progressed from a modest beginning, when one shilling for a night’s lodging was an average award, to today’s possible provision of a house for a widow and her family; to the continuing development of Princess Marina House at Rustington in West Sussex as a convalescent and residential centre, and the introduction of Alastrean House in Scotland, and to the success of the Duke of Kent School for RAF children at Ewhurst in Surrey.

All of this has been made possible, of course, by the way the fund has been helped with donations over the years from members of the RAF, from companies and from the public. The Debt we Owe will prove of interest to all who have served or are serving in the Royal Air Force, their relatives and dependants; at the same time it will be useful to the honorary Helpers of the fund and students of the Social Services. Not least will it appeal to those who support the fund.

Apart from a small light stain to the closed page edges, both the book and the dust jacket are in very good condition.