Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit, sad episode today. The family of Squadron leader George Leonard Johnson, Johnny Johnson,

they've announced that Johnny died at the age of 101 on December the 7th, 2022. Johnny Johnson was the last surviving member of the original 617 Squadron who took part in operation Chastise,

the damn busters raid in May 1943. He was the last damn buster. I was lucky enough to meet Johnny several times in my career, I remember going way back into the early noughties he came as a hardy, healthy man in his 80s drove himself up to Darbyshire where we walked the Darbyshire dams on which the damn busters trained.

Little did I think then as we went to the pub afterwards and had a few beers and dinner how rare and extraordinary this opportunity was. As the years went by in the group of veterans from that conflict dwindled, it started to feel more and more special every time I met him.

I saw him in Lincoln and I used to go and visit him in his care home where he sat down very kindly and gave me an interview for the History Hit podcast just as I was starting out.

That is the episode that we're repeating today on the podcast so we can celebrate the passing of a national treasure. Thank you Johnny for a lifetime of service and thank you personally for being so nice to me and allowing me to bother you and record your words for posterity.

Here is RIP, enjoy.

The Tommie's found, Tommie's found, Hero's Sheep, Tommie's Paid, the King, the Black Quank Unit until their first in the Black Unit. Never to go to war with one another in a game.

And look at this, and the subtle head cleared the power.

Can I ask first about your upbringing because it was quite a tough childhood you had.

My mother died for my third birthday, so I never knew her mother's love. And I had a father who, whether he blamed me for my mother's death, I don't know.

But the first thing I remember about him was we were at the hospital waiting to go up and see my mother.

And he was told somebody else, I wanted to join them. And he explained to this character who I was. I was the sixth of the family, the youngest of six.

And this guy said, what another one? My father, yes, he's a mistake. Thank you very much. I remember that from that age.

And from then on, the father's eyes, he was concerned I was a mistake. And with no spending, he was used to cut through it, raise it for shaving.

And the stroke was hung on the back of the kitchen door. And if that shop came down and he wasn't shaving, I knew where it was headed right across my back. And that was it.

And that was the sort of upbringing that I started with. And my sister almost became my surrogate mother. She was seven years older than me.

My father treated her much the same as you treated me. You're not hitting her. But he argued. Now daughter, I was let to look after her father in the way he wanted it done at the time he wanted it done. And that was it.

And what is now Lord Wandsworth's college in Hampshire was Lord Wandsworth's agricultural college in my day. And it was requeathed by Lord Wandsworth for the children of agricultural families to lost one or both parents and everything was free.

Well, the head teacher of elementary school heard about this. She applied on my behalf and I was interviewed. I offered a place. My father said no.

Of 14 year leave school, he goes out and gets a job and brings some money into the house. The teacher was so furious about this. We had a squire. Still got a squire in the small village. She went to see the squires wife and told her the story.

And the squires wife went to see my father and told him his fortune in no uncertain terms how he was ruining my chances of a better education and a much better future life. He would be ashamed himself.

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