London, Bomber Command
Memorial, 5 July. It is sixty-seven years too late. The Bomber Boys gaze over me looking
exhaustedly and exhaustively for comrades who will never return. Seven RAF Bomber Command aircrew cast in
bronze probably just off a Lancaster that has somehow miraculously survived a World
War Two ‘trip’ over Nazi Germany. Etched
into the sombre Portland stone of London’s beautiful new monument to the men of
Bomber Command are Churchill’s famous words of September 1940, “The fighters
are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of our victory”.
RAF Bomber Command flew
364,514 sorties during ‘the war’. Of the
125,000 who clambered almost daily into Wellingtons, Halifaxes, Stirlings and,
of course, the iconic Lancaster, 55,573 lost their lives. Only the German U-Boat crews suffered greater
losses of any service in any force anywhere.
Men had a 30% chance of surviving their first tour. As for the rest life
was a lottery and they knew it.
Two weeks ago I had the
honour to take breakfast in the mess at RAF Leeming sitting at a table where many
young Britons and Canadians had eaten their final meal before being consumed by
a fiery death over Germany. Last week
Her Majesty the Queen unveiled this simple memorial to very brave men in front
of thinning ranks of veterans from many nations as a lone Lancaster dropped a
field of poppies over London’s Green Park.
For five years with
growing accuracy and intensity RAF heavy bombers pulverised German cities and
killed large numbers of German civilians night after terrifying night. One has only to visit a German city or read
Max Hasting’s harrowing account of 5 Group’s 1944 attack on Darmstadt to get
some understanding of the suffering that Bomber Command inflicted.
However, whilst I
regret the suffering I have long-learned not to judge a past age by the values
of the current age. This was total war
that had to be fought and won totally against a regime that was seeking to
subjugate Europe with its appalling mix of nationalism, racism and militarism.
This was a regime that was sending millions to the gas chamber. In 1940-1941 Luftwaffe attacks on British
cities such as Coventry, London, my own Sheffield and many others led to tragic
loss of civilian life. Air Chief Marshal
Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris made Britain’s position terrifyingly simple; “The
Germans have sown the wind. They will now
reap the whirlwind”. In August 1943 that
whirlwind hit Hamburg which over two nights was virtually obliterated by the
RAF. The damage was so great that Goebbels
told Hitler that a few more raids like that and the war would be lost. Cologne,
Kassel, Berlin and of course Dresden suffered raids of up to one thousand
aircraft, as did much of the Ruhr industrial basin.
The debate over the
strategic value and morality of the bomber offensive will continue on for many
years to come, as will the debate over the value of Britain putting so much of
its wartime industrial effort into producing large bombers. However, I will always recall the words of my
Dutch wife’s great aunt who died two years ago at the age of 102. She told me that in the four years before
D-Day the sound of the ever-increasing bomber streams passing overhead night
after night to strike the Nazis hard gave real hope to the Dutch people that so
long as Britain was fighting hard deliverance would one day come from brutal occupation
as indeed it did.
Perhaps the greatest
tribute we can offer these young men is not just this stunning memorial but the
fact that Coventry and Dresden are today twinned in reconciliation. That atop the rebuilt Frauenkirche in Dresden
sits a golden orb from Coventry. It also
places today’s contentions in stark perspective. Whatever the tensions and irritations of the
latest European crisis this is not a war; far from it. Britain and democratic Germany are today
friends and it must always be thus. Indeed,
even if Britain is forced to leave the EU, as I believe in time it will, we
will leave as friends. L.P. Hartley’s
famous reminder that the past is another country is nowhere as eloquent as
Europe.
At the base of the
memorial I found a note left by a relative. It commemorates New Zealand brothers John and
George Mee who perished on sorties a few months apart. “As with their comrades they did not seek
glory, they asked for no collateral for their lives, they demanded no privileges,
no power or influence as they flew steadily into the valley of death”.
Strike hard, strike sure,
Gentlemen.
Julian Lindley-French
