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NEWS - BomberCommand - epetition reply from 10 Downing Street


Jack

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It's the fault of everyone who voted Labour last time, not that all the rest of them are much better. "How do you know if a Politician is lying? You can see his lips move".

 

Have you ever looked at Bomber Command losses for 1943? It was normal that if a Bomber was hit, that all the crew was lost. Survivors seem to be a very small minority.

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Lets ALL just face it;

 

ALL Veterans of ANY war/conflict situation, after only a very short while, become an embarrasment to the 'suits in power',.............Look back through history, after the First World War,......where was the promised 'Land Fit for Hero's',...........

 

 

This WHOLE situation makes me SICK;

 

Those in power,...(and SAFE :whistle:) are only too keen to 'beat the drum',...and wave 'the boys', off in showers of B*LLSH*T;..........

Different matter when they come home,........and thats those who manage it in one piece,..........the injured/mained ones,those who then have to FIGHT

for the right to get help,........some thing that SHOULD be automatic.......well thats another matter.

 

I'm sorry,............No hang it, I'm NOT sorry,..P*SSED OFF would be a better expression,............its about time these seff same politico's are made to fight in the front line, for a while;.........I think we would then see some understanding of the plight being suffered by those who are at present being SH*T ON.

 

Andy

 

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Churchill fought in the 1st World War and Paddy Ashdown fought in something as well (cannot remember) but was not they politicians if I remember correctly :dunno:

 

 

 

Yup,......Quite right, Mark;

 

I'd NOT forgotton Churchill, when typing the above,..(I'll admit to forgetting Paddy Ashdown, though :whistle:)

 

Churchill WAS always haunted by the loss of life, he saw at galipoli, and, in my opinion, made him cautious when 'signing off', any action plan,....wanting 'HIS' guys to be as well equiped as poss, with back up.

(look at the involvment he personally had in the setting up of the 79th Div,.The Funnies)

 

What i was getting at, was that its (possibly) much easier to not understand the reasons people WANT memorials, etc, if they had/have NOT been involved 'at the sharp end'.

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Those of you who read my replies will know that if I'm not trying to help someone then I'm poking gentle fun at some of the posts. This is not a political forum and never should be. The government we get is the government we deserve immaterial of the alledged colour. The few people who replied before me are a throwback of the attitude of my generation who grew up with fathers and mothers who survived the war ( I'm the wrong side of 60) and as a nation then we took nobody's s--t, internally or externally but we have grown complacent and except for a few, just take it. Now we seem to live in a society with the attitude of "if it doesn't affect me then s-d it" and the way I see it, that's what's wrong, immaterial of who we vote for. The Merchant Navy never got the recognition they deserve either, but they like Bomber command and many others like The Bevan Boys are now an old embarrassment to the powers that be.

God bless them all.

Written with great Passion and Annoyance, and no apologies either,

John.

 

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Churchill fought in the 1st World War and Paddy Ashdown fought in something as well (cannot remember) but was not they politicians if I remember correctly :dunno:

 

Special Boat Squadron of the Royal Marines (or however they define SBS at this precise moment in time). Their peace-time remit nowadays is to guard nuclear packages being moved around the country.

 

Right up until Maggie's day, most cabinet ministers, particularly Tories, had served their time. Willie Whitelaw commanded a Churchill Squadron in Normandy. Tony Benn ISTR was also RAC - at least he knew what he was talking about whenever he took an anti-war stance. Sir Ian Gow served in Malaya against the Mao Mao with 15/19H, God rest his soul.

 

And then came Tony ... (and Dave, to be fair).

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I think you are entirely wrong to blame the current bunch in power. Ok, they could make an enormous gesture and offer a medal or maybe a clasp. But there is no modern precedent and it simply cannot happen. This government have been embroiled in other related (perhaps not so apparent or, indeed, welcome) issues to do with previous wars, particularly the Shot at Dawn lobby (revisionism and very modern ethics loosely applied to a lost world); and events as far back as the Potato Famine (guilt stopping short of compensation) and won't want to make any more errors of judgement by reversing decisions made, in this instance, in 1945. If we can't make a proper apology to millions of slaves, we'll never give retrospective medals to people deemed to have killed innocent civilians. if any government started making gestures like this, there would be adverse consequences - groups wanting their own medals, more calls for apologies or expressions of regret. More revisionism. More lies from the apologists and Britain haters born in our own land. The Bomber Command medal lobby have no hope now, or historically. They need to remain above the politicking of other lobbies and campaign groups. They must remain champions.

 

Let me qualify this. I am 100% behind a proper lasting honour for all the men and women of Bomber Command. They have been my idols since I was a kid. They saved us. The Battle of Britain was for a few front pages, Bomber Command filled the rest. Every night, every week, every year until victory. God Bless Them ALL. The crews we know. But the armourers and clerks, the fitters and parachute packers, the mortuary attendants and police - they got the defence medal and the victory medal - the same as joe soap - their herculean effort merged with everyone else. The whole Command deserved a separate medal. But the politics of 1945 and the mindset of the way the committees worked who planned medal issues combined to seal the fate of a unique Bomber Command award.

 

The Aircrew Europe Star could have been issued with clasps for the relevant RAF commands - it would have been nice. But they didn't do nice. The base staff would still have gone unrecognised. The mood was to get the whole thing wrapped up and move on, Attlee's election landslide illustrates this - it was the national will. Arthur Harris is said to have been hurt that his Old Lags were not singled out for specific award - he wanted none for himself - but his whole command was swept under the carpet. The ethics of bombing and the bombing of ethics were to be eased off the stage.

 

In the end Bomber Command have as big an axe to grind as the D-Day Dodgers and the Forgotten Army along with countless others. We don't forget them at all, every day - for ever more - governments and hacks remember when column inches and tv soundbites matter. We have the best idea.

 

I signed the petition and would have liked to see a retrospective award. But this was from the heart - not the head. In the end they deserve something much more - a fitting memorial in the capital city just like the Battle of Britain got. We've built bigger monuments to animals. But for now Lincoln Cathedral, however solemnified, will have to do. This insult is a crime greater than a lack of medals. But, in their case, revisionism started on May 8th 1945 and has never stopped. We all know the state was immediately embarassed by the achievements of Bomber Command. They were airbrushed out.

 

Recent history is revealing: Harris' statue sometimes dawbed with paint. In Germany the chimera of the Terrorfleiger lives on as a counterweight to Auschwitz. Don't be fooled. We know who the criminals are. We know who brought them to heel - our great British people and our Allies, who have enjoyed far more of the laurels in recent years while our society chooses to forget. Honour these men and women. The medals would be nice - but the people will live on if we keep it that way.

 

 

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One of the countless "joys" of my 34 years with Ford has been the endless arguments with our German masters over in the Fourth Reich (and this refers to Ford of Germany ONLY, not Germany per se) about the so-called "Terrorfleiger". A LOT of the younger ones go on about how appalling it was that we bombed their cities - and get very, very uptight when it's pointed out to them that the art of blowing innocent civilians to bit with bombs in air raids was actually THEIR countrymens idea - the Blitz's on London, Coventry, Plymouth etc. all took place before the big raids by the RAF. Also Coventry was the UK's own version of Hamburg and Dresden. So the RAF were just playing by the Germans rules and happened to be better at it...

The only reason we never copped it as bad was because the idiots (fortunately) responsible for the Luftwaffe never caught onto the idea of a strategic long range bomber until very late in the war. Had the Luftwaffe possed machines like the Halifax, Stirling and Lancaster back in 1939/40 things might have turned out different.....

 

"Bomber" Harris put it extraordinarily well when he said back then "They have sowed the wind - now they shall reap the whirlwind"!!

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Blitz's on London, Coventry, Plymouth etc. all took place before the big raids by the RAF. Also Coventry was the UK's own version of Hamburg and Dresden.

 

One thing that always gets my goat is this. Dresden was firestormed into history in the late weeks of the war as the Russians closed on it from the East.

 

After the war, it has become usual for do-gooders to whinge that Dresden was an historic city of no military value. It was hard to defend the "no military value" argument when any existing proof either way that hadn't been destroyed was in the hands of a newSoviet Cold War enemy who wasn't going to make life easy.

 

Sometime in the mid-90s, following the Soviets' withdrawal, proof became available to the newly-reunified Germans on the issue of Dresden as a non-military target. Of course the fact that 6 SS Panzerarmee was on trains on its way to (or from - I forget) Hungary for their last action of the war, making it A PERFECTLY VALID MILITARY TARGET wasn't broadcast as loud and clearly as our Bomber Command heroes deserved because it went agaisnt German (and do-gooder) revisionist views of history. (I think it was Max Hastings I read quoting 6 SS Panzerarmee. Good enough for me.)

 

So of course the do-gooders (those who bothered to worry about facts at all) change their tune and whinge that the whole city did not need to be bombed for the sake of the railway marshalling yards. With the USA by this time having dropped smart bombs through bunker doors and shown around the world on TV screens during the then-recent Gulf War, it was clearly too much for these people to realise that in 1945 precision bombing was the preserve of a handful of elite pilots (of 617 Squadron: their first commander, Guy Gibson, carried with him the stigma of, earlier in the war, bombing the wrong COUNTRY). In 1945 carpet bombing and firestorming was the only way to ensure destruction of a target.

 

But that is all irrelevant. Yes, Dresden was, contrary to myth, a valid military target and yes, it had to be firestormed to destroy it, but these are all details.

 

THEY STARTED IT AND THEY REAPED THEIR OWN WHIRLWIND.

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If I recall correctly the first bombs to drop on London were in fact unitentional due to navigation error from the JU88 that dropped them, up until that time in the war no bombs were dropped on the capital on Hitlers orders, after that we started to attack their cities in retaliation

 

Please feel free to correct my history recall if I am wrong on this.

 

Thank you

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If I recall correctly the first bombs to drop on London were in fact unitentional due to navigation error from the JU88 that dropped them, up until that time in the war no bombs were dropped on the capital on Hitlers orders, after that we started to attack their cities in retaliation

 

Please feel free to correct my history recall if I am wrong on this.

 

Thank you

 

 

As far as I know you are correct.

 

BUT lets not forget Guernica (1936), Warsaw(1939) and Rotterdam (1940).....

If the Dutch didn't surrender more of our city's would be bombed.

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