A beautiful, poignant tribute to Czech heroes
I have a personal reason to wish to see the Czech Memorial Fountain in Jephson Gardens rejuvenated and preserved. Based on my impressions of the fountain during the years I lived In Leamington, as well as upon my association with a person who lived in Prague during that era, I have written a fictionalized account of the Czech patriots who, on a dark May night in 1942, flew from Coventry Airport to parachute into an area near Lidice on a mission to assassinate SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich.
The fountain is not only imaginative, it is beautiful, and the people of Leamington and Warwickshire should be proud to have such a poignant tribute to those seven men. Remembering them is as significant as remembering the destruction of Lidice and knowing about the Wannsee Protocol that called for the total annihilation of the world’s Jews, for they are everlastingly linked. I sincerely trust that the citizens of Leamington and Warwickshire will realize the importance of the deed performed by those men and that they will join together to preserve the fountain.
John Bell Smithback, formerly of New Street, Cubbington