The Dedication and Unveiling Ceremony

My last post was about  the forthcoming dedication of the Bomber Command Memorial. Well, now it has happened. After a wait of almost 70 years, the families and comrades of the airmen lost during the bombing campaigns of the Second World War now have a permanent, national, reminder of the bravery and the sacrifce made by these men. The survivors are now old men, in their late eighties and nineties. The Bomber Command Association have estimated that they are losing, on average, twelve former crewmen a week. It is very sad that so many have passed away over the years without seeing a fitting memorial to all of their lost friends and colleagues.

The casualty rate was staggering. Out of a total of 125,00 aircrew, 55,573 were killed, 8,403 were wounded and 9,838 were made prisoners of war. These men were all volunteers and had an average age of just 22. Volunteers also came from Commonwealth countries and from occupied Europe. Many of the young men put in charge of a 30 ton, four engined monster of a bomber had probably never even driven a car before signing up. Yet despite supporting these crews and encouraging the principle of area bombing during the war, many of those in authority chose to protect their own futures as the war moved towards an end, and distance themselves from the destruction and large scale loss of life that resulted from those raids.

In September 1941, Winston Churchill said "The fighters are our salvation but the bombers alone provide the means of victory". In his Victory Speech in 1945 he made no mention at all of Bomber Command and it's contribution to the war. No campaign medal was issued  and although the bomber war was not written out of the history books, the men who took part in it were, to all intents and purposes, quietly forgotten.

All of that is now in the past and due to the tireless campaigning of the Bomber Command Assocoiation, the support of the remaining veterans and the fund raising power of the Heritage Foundation, the Memorial has been completed. On Thursday, in the presence of several thousand veterans, widows, family members and representatives of the nations whose young men volunteered to fight the common foe, the Memorial was dedicated and the sculpture of a seven man bomber crew was unveiled by Her Majesty the Queen. It was a dignified and fitting ceremony the highlight of which, for many of the old airmen, was the Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight showering Green Park wth poppies. It was a privelege for me to accompany my Dad to this long awaited event

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I must give a very big thank you to the organisers of the event and especially to the cadets and the serving airmen and women who not only acted as ushers but who took the time to sit and chat with the veterans. They also spent a great deal of time handing out bottles of water, which was a lifesaver on what was an extremely hot day. A mention also for the St John's Ambulance crews who assisted those who found the heat just a little too much.

I apologise for the photographs accompanying this post. I had intended to cover the event quite extensively but on the day found that I could only do that by standing up and moving around. This would have resulted in me obscuring the view for others and as most of those others had more right to be there than me, I decided to content myself with grabbing the odd, sometimes partially obscured, shot here and there.

Others have covered it far better than me. Here

The Bomber Command Memorial

On Thursday (28th June) an important new memorial is to be dedicated in London.

Almost 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the 55,573 aircrew of RAF Bomber Command who lost their lives during that conflict are to finally have a permanent, national memorial. Located on the Piccadilly side of Green Park, at the junction with Hyde Park Corner, it has been dogged by a certain amount of controversy ranging from its design, its size, its location and even whether it should have been built at all. I suppose that the fact of the matter is that what you think of the design, size and location are all a matter of personal taste but whether, or not, it should have been built shouldn't really be up for discussion.

These young men, all volunteers and with an average age of just 22, died doing the job that was set for them by the military and political leaders of the day. Winston Churchill, the master of the soundbite, made several speeches throughout the war praising the job that they were doing and the sacrifices they were making in the effort to bring the war to an end. Sadly, as the war drew toward that end, some of those military leaders and most of the politicians, including Churchill, began to see that their support of area bombing and the resulting "collateral damage" could possibly have a detrimental effect on their peacetime careers. To reduce that effect they began to distance themselves from the bomber crews and their achievments.

Shamefully, Churchill failed to mention the contribution of the bomber crews in his Victory speech, no campaign medals were issued and no national monument was built.

Now, after a considerable fund raising effort by the Bomber Command Association, and the Heritage Foundation, the Memorial has been built. and it will be unveiled by the Queen at noon on Thursday. Importantly, the Memorial also commemorates the people of all nations who lost their lives in the bombing campaigns of 1939-1945.

I should declare an interest here. My Dad is one of the survivors.I will be with him,  along with a large number of other veterans, for what I expect to be a moving and very emotional ceremony which will end with a flypast of five Tornado GR4 aircraft and (weather permitting) the Avro Lancaster of the BBMF . Tears will be shed and some of those will be mine

The ceremony will be shown in "Bomber Command: a Tribute" on BBC2 at 5.00pm on Thursday (repeated at 11.20pm) and if you want to find out more about the events at the end of the war, a program called "Who Betrayed the Bomber Boys?" will be shown at 9.00pm the same night on the Yesterday channel.

A special mention should be made here for the late Robin Gibb, who was very much the driving force behind the Heritage Foundation's fund raising campaign. It is such a shame that he won't be there to see the final result of his efforts.

Finally, please remember that this is not a Memorial to war but it is a Memorial to those who were lost in war. Consider it accordingly.