Shortly before Rotterdam was terror bombed, the city soon would be apocalyptically burning, the few surviving Dutch flyers with planes took off for one last flight for one final fight. They didn't survive, but they fought to the last. However, their memory lingers in time.
History records a perception that defenders or members of a last stand were idealistic and fighting nobly in lost cause. They attribute to these defenders the traits of brave, morality, or qualitatively elite. But that isn't necessarily true.
They realized they were fighting against motivated foes who seemed to be made of steel. If the defenders feared, it didn't act as flaw. If immoral, that didn't guarantee defeat. The end was showing, and seeing the surging Wehrmacht below, they'd strike one final time from the skies like lighting.
Instead of bravery, they had an enemy to oppose and fought because it was all they could do. They faced losing everything, all they loved, anything they believed in. With no monopoly upon the truth they still knew, their cause was greater than the threat of dying.
Win or lose, the decision to fight alone offered any hope. Perhaps the enemy could not be defeated but doing nothing in the face of that meant not only defeat, but the death of all they might know.
"When the invasion of Holland took place I was recalled from leave and went on my first operation on 15 May 1940 against mainland Germany. Our target was Dortmund and on the way back we were routed via Rotterdam. The German Air Force had bombed Rotterdam the day before and it was still in flames. I realised then only too well that the phoney war was over and that this was for real. By that time the fire services had extinguished a number of fires, but they were still dotted around the whole city. This was the first time I'd ever seen devastation by fires on this scale. We went right over the southern outskirts of Rotterdam at about 6,000 or 7,000 feet, and you could actually smell the smoke from the fires burning on the ground. I was shocked seeing a city in flames like that. Devastation on a scale I had never experienced." Air Commodore Wilf Burnett.
