-: Like a lot of men of his generation,
they didn't talk about it at all,
and I knew very, very little.
I knew that he'd flown, I had no idea the extent.
I did know that he had received a medal.
And my mother had told me
that he had thrown it into the Thames.
Not out of any contempt for the RAF or for the war,
but out of profound survivor's guilt,
and the idea that he would have been singled out
to be given this great honor when so many of his friends
and so many men and women had died.