War isn't glamorous. Objectively speaking it's the most horrid thing we do.
Class isn't just being glamorous. Class is who you are. It's what you do every day. It's what you do when no-one is watching, and it's what you do when the world is watching.
It's what you do when life is good, and it's what you do when all the chips are down and you're fighting for the life of yourself and everyone you will ever know.
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This wasn't the Middle East where the state swoops in and bombs unarmed kids for next to no reason.
This was our greatest test - the fight for our very survival.
Fighting and winning a total war that you didn't start to protect the lives of everyone in your country and your entire way of life is more than classy. It is having the will and the strength to never surrender.
Risking your life, all on your own, in a rickety metal box flying kilometres above the ocean, only by the light of the occasional flare, for the lives of everyone you hold dear, all of whom you will likely never see again, is more than classy. It is beyond reproach.
The people who designed and built the Merlin engines for the RAF were masters of their craft, doing what they could and what they needed to when their country needed them most.
They were only doing what they knew - but for that you, and I, and everyone in the Western world owe them a debt that we could never hope to pay.
And the men who flew the aircraft they powered were heroes, greater than any in a comic book. Ordinary men in a sense, doing their duty, but men who will never be forgotten, for in the course of that duty they also happened to save us all.
And that's more than classy.