What about Arthur’s Bomber medal? (From St Helens Star)

What about Arthur’s Bomber medal?

5:14pm Wednesday 1st July 2009

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LET us hope that Mr Shaun Woodward MP reads the St Helens Star’s excellent article on his constituent, wartime Halifax tail-gunner Arthur Young.

He might then use his influence on Gordon Brown to persuade him to ask The Queen to confer a long-overdue campaign medal on all who served in Bomber Command. (It is understood that Her Majesty is willing to do so).

Of its 125,000 aircrew from Britain and the Commonwealth, 55,573 were killed and over 8,000 wounded - percentage losses only surpassed by German U-boat crews.

Those young men, average age only 22, flew over Germany, facing such hazards as crashes on take-off, mechanical failure, collisions, icing, searchlights, night-fighters with upward-firing guns, heavy flak, and the risk of being blown out of an aircraft at 20,000 feet without time to clip on a parachute.

Several who did manage to land were captured by angry civilians and lynched. Even those who returned to a fog-bound Britain sometimes crashed on landing.

Those young men were terrified, but repeated the ordeal night after night in the remote hope of completing the requisite 30 operations. Theirs was courage of the highest order.

Though it would be wrong to claim that Bomber Command and the USAAF won the War - territory is taken by armies - it is certain that without their efforts in destroying viaducts, railway terminals, road bridges, oil and gas installations, along with ball-bearing and ammunition factories, the Allies would undoubtedly have lost it.

Perhaps Mr Woodward will point out to Gordon Brown that, if the British Government persists in denying Bomber Command its special campaign medal, the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand are now planning to award their own medals.

That would take some of the gloss off the new Armed Forces Day.

Kevin Heneghan, North Road, St Helens

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