Last of Churchill's Few meets daughter of Italian girl who risked her life to save him.

The last surviving RAF fighter pilot from the Battle of Britain has met the daughter of an Italian girl who saved his life in northern Italy during world war two, almost 80 years ago.

The emotional encounter took place in Dublin on Thursday, six months after 104-year-old Group Captain John 'Paddy' Hemingway made a public appeal to "meet that little girl who saved me from the Germans".

The appeal was launched in Italy by a local aviation society, Archaeologists of the Air, following an article by Paolo Ricci Bitti in Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

When Italian woman Lina Volpi read about the appeal she knew straight away that the courageous little girl in the story was her mother, Carla Fabbri, who passed away about 10 years ago.

Volpi, 61, travelled to the Irish capital to meet Hemingway and talk about her mother who - at the age of nine - had helped the pilot escape, reports Il Resto del Carlino newspaper.

Hemingway had been on a mission to attack a German column near Ferrara but had to make an emergency landing in Copparo on 23 April 1945 after the Spitfire he was piloting was hit by ground fire.

It was the fourth time the airman had been shot down and survived, a phenomenon he would later attribute to "the luck of the Irish".

Stuck behind enemy lines, Hemingway was rescued by a local Italian family who reached him before he was taken prisoner by the Nazis.

With the help of Italian partisans, the family kept Hemingway in hiding despite threats on their lives by German troops searching for the pilot.

After being disguised in peasant clothing, Hemingway was entrusted to nine-year-old Carla who took his hand and led her "papà" to safety beyond the Gothic Line, after walking through the darkness for hours.

Almost eight decades later, Hemingway has never forgotten the courage of the child who risked her life to save his.

"For all those hours I was scared as hell, not for my life, I'm Irish, but I was terrified of becoming the cause of the death of that brave little girl," Hemingway said as he launched the campaign to thank her, or her family, in person.

Last week his wish came true when he met Carla's daughter who was "literally overwhelmed by the emotions I felt when I met him", reports Il Resto del Carlino.

Volpi presented Hemingway with a framed picture containing fragments of the Spitfire that he was piloting in 1945 when he crash-landed near Coccanile, donated by the Archaeologists of the Air.

"When he saw it, his eyes lit up" - she said - "While I shook his hand I immediately thought that the same hand had shaken my mother's 79 years earlier and in that moment I felt very close to her. An emotion that is really difficult to describe."

Article first published on 13 December 2023, updated on 24 June 2024. Cover photo Lidia Mastellari.