Given rock stars’ eagerness to support every liberal
cause going – AIDS, Famine Relief, Climate Change, Drug Addiction,
Homelessness, First World War Deserters, Victims of Racism, Football Stadium Disasters… basically anything that’s been given the seal of approval by our
enlightened media-entertainment elite - it’s a surprise, to say the least, when one of them
supports a cause which doesn’t afford them the opportunity to indulge in public
displays of compassion on Children in Need or to record a charidy zingle.
So when a prominent member of the Rock/Pop fraternity spearheads a
campaign to set up something as deeply untrendy as a memorial to commemorate men who dropped an enormous amount of
bombs on foreigners, causing huge loss of life, injury, terror, starvation and
homelessness, not to mention destroying many beautiful buildings and works of
art – well, you can be damned sure that the star in question isn’t doing it to
court favour with the Guardian or the BBC, or simply to revive a flagging career.
Robin Gibb, the Bee Gee who spearheaded the campaign for a
memorial to the 55,573 members of Bomber Command who lost their lives in the Second World War, died 40 days before today’s unveiling ceremony in Green Park. We can
be certain that he didn’t act as president of the memorial’s heritage
foundation so that Stephen Fry and his chums would think well of him: I’m sure
he did so out of a sense of gratitude towards those who died, and out of a
sense of righteous anger that the sacrifice of these almost inconceivably brave
men, and their leader, Air Marshall Arthur “Bomber” Harris, has been treated in
such a callous, shoddy, disgraceful fashion by the authorities for the past 65
years.
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| My father (second from left) and three members of his crew |
My favourite "Bomber" Harris story was when he breezed into the Air Ministry every week to de-brief "the frocks" [his political masters] and bellow at them " So what have you rear-echelon bastards tried to do to lose us the war this week?" When the knives came out he didn't have too many friends at court.
ReplyDeleteEqually, Hugh "Stuffy" Dowding, was very badly treated. Having master-minded and executed Fighter Command's strategy in the Battle of Britain [most notably by his point-blank refusal to obey WSC's repeated orders to commit all our fighter squadrons to the defence of France because he knew what was coming and to lift the embargo on the participation of Polish and Czheck pilots]he was quietly removed at the end of 1940.
what can i say we go to london every year to the rugby league cup final at wembley.this year 2012 first port of call memorial to bomber command god bless bomber command bomber harris and more than 55.000 airmen. without them we would not be going to wembley this year or any year.this memorial is long overdue. dave land yorkshire
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