SIR, I am completing my fifth book on flying in Bomber Command. I believe that it should go down in history the disgraceful way that England treated those who gave years of their life and, in so many cases, life itself to protect country and loved ones.

One of posterity’s worst vices is to dub everyone who served in that war, a hero. In some sense they were compared with the privileged generations who have never had to eat whale meat and powdered egg, experience German bombing, suffer years of separation from loved ones or endure battle. However ‘hero’ is a special word, which ought to be used very sparingly.

Bombers carried out one of the deadliest jobs, but they have not been honoured. Of those flying for the RAF’s Bomber Command, only 27 per cent were lucky to finish the tour of 30 operations. With a realistic prospect of dying, and without much complaint, they took off night after night, year after year, to do what they were told was necessary to help Britain win the war.

The statistics make those veterans who are still here men to marvel at. Most of those who did what they did have been mouldering in the cemeteries of Europe since the early 1940s. If we want to identify authentic ‘heroes’, those who faced some of the war’s most awful perils deserve that title.

Why has nothing been done for the men of Bomber Command, ‘Harris’s Old Lags’ (Harris himself was also not offered a peerage) whose contribution to victory was purchased at the cost of every second man killed in action in a continuing battle? There should be a Bomber Command medal, to honour those who took the war to Hitler’s Germany for five years when no soldiers could.

Laurie Woods DFC, Life President, 640 RAAF Squadron Association OZ, Jim Wright DFC RAF (Ret), Abingdon