The Dam Busters

EPILOGUE

After the war, Wallis’ friends urged him to claim a reward for his war-time inventions, but he said that if he did he would never touch such money for himself. I asked him why, and he said, “My dear chap, go and read your Bible. Turn up Samuel II, chapter twenty-three. You probably haven’t got a Bible, so I’ll tell you this story about David:

“He was hiding in the cave of Adullam after the Philistines had seized Bethlehem, and in his anguish he said, ‘Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!’ Now the three mighty men who were his lieutenants were with him, and I’m dashed if they didn’t fight their way through the Philistine lines and draw a goatskin of water out of the well by the gate. They fought their way back and took the water to David in the cave, but when they told him how they had got it he would not drink it. They asked him why, and he said:

“‘Is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?’”

(Just after this was written the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors granted Barnes Wallis PS10,000 for his wartime work. He immediately put it all into a fund to help educate the sons and daughters of men who died serving with the Royal Air Force.)