When the last surviving Dambuster, 98 year old George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, turned over a spadeful of earth at last year’s ground breaking ceremony at Norton Disney in Lincolnshire, he inaugurated the long-awaited construction of a major landmark sculpture of a Lancaster bomber. ‘Johnny’ Johnson, who among other honours and awards has an MBE for services to Second World War remembrance and the community, including his outstanding work on mental health rehabilitation, imprinted a little of himself in that Lincolnshire landscape’s layers of memory. He was a link between past and present, and linked the landmark to the future perceptions and narratives of the Lancaster aircrews.
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