Bomber Command

So they want to put guided missiles amidst our begonias, but it's taken them sixty nine years to grant, in the official way, credit to the 55,000 young airmen who had themselves shot out of the sky over Germany in WW2. This must be some kind of record for mendacity. My uncle was one of those who flew several tours as a rear gunner in a Halifax. Uncle George was Mexican, and I bet the bastards saw him coming back then with a quick 'you'll do'. But he survived, never to talk about it ever.

The experience, which I can only imagine, must have haunted him the whole of his remaining life, it certainly permanently attached him to the sherry bottle and ingrained a distinct phobia of machinery. My dad was always being asked to fix his beat up cars. But all because the British are just a little embarrassed at their less than perfect status as combatants in global war, he never had anywhere to go as a memorial to remember his comrades, or more importantly perhaps, to respect himself. This is the mendacity; our pompous, grandiloquent posturing amidst a reality of shameful cowering mediocrity, of authority pleased to demand the ultimate sacrifice but unprepared to take the consequences, and a distinct lack of virtue amongst those who are so pleased to present us with it's simulation.