Posted on 04/24/2008 6:23:51 PM PDT by naturalman1975
BRUCE Buckham is the kind of war hero that kids used to love reading about in comics.
As an Australian pilot at the controls of Lancaster bombers, he flew 76 bombing missions over Germany and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.
Mr Buckham, 89, who lives in quiet retirement in the leafy Brisbane suburb of Indooroopilly, sank the German floating fortress the Tirpitz, wiped out a top secret factory he believes the Nazis were using to develop their own version of the atomic bomb and set a record by flying more than 15 hours non-stop.
While flying with the RAAF's 463 Squadron into relentless barrages of anti-aircraft fire and dodging German fighter planes, wasn't he ever scared?
"Often - before we got our briefings to go on missions, crew members used to come up to me and say, 'Oh, boss, aren't you scared about this?"' Mr Buckham said. "I'd say 'Oh, no, it might be a bit hard but all you've got to do is just do your job'. They didn't know that internally I felt as much fright and fear as they did."
Mr Buckham, who retired in the late 1970s as Brisbane manager of BHP, won the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery in World War II.
But there is one honour he believes he and his comrades in arms have been unjustly denied since the war. Australian, British and Canadian crews who served with Bomber Command in Britain during World War II have long been calling for their own campaign medal, but the governments of the three countries have persistently ignored or denied their requests.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Gee, and to think that Lyndon Johnson “won” a Silver Star for flying on a B-26 as an observer, never coming closer than 80 miles to a Japanese aircraft.
Stiffing them on a campaign medal? Kerry got the Silver Star for shooting a kid in the back.
God bless these heroes. Western civilization would have been destroyed had it not been for them.
I always thought that the sleazy scumbag Lieutenant Commander/Congressman character in the John Wayne movie “In Harm’s Way” was patterned after ol’ Lyndon Johnson, may he rot in hell.
A lot of this has to to with what we now call political correctness.
Because Harris and Bomber Command ruthlessly incinerated one German city after another causing huge firestorms and killing thousands of civilians. This culminated in the the Feb. 1945 Dresden raid British and commonwealth officialdom, wishing to avoid embarrassing recrimination over area bombing, did their best to sweep Bomber Command under the rug and didn’t honor them in the same way they honored other services.
Until his death Harris lobbied unsuccessfully for such a campaign medal. The fact that to this day the British and other Commonwealth national governments refuse to do so is a huge dishonor and a slap in the face to thousands of men who took part in one of the most dangerous campaigns of that war. A long campaign where approximately half of all combat crews became casualties.
“Its been suggested that bombing alone cannot win a war, however no one has tried it yet and we shall see.”
-Sir Arthur Harris
From memory 10,000 Australians served in Bomber Command in WW2 and something like 3500 were killed. If that doesn’t deserve a campaign medal then few things do.
So, does that make you think more or less of MacArthur for sucking up to the only member of Congress that didn't resign his seat when he enlisted?
As for a campaign medal, I'm guessing that the fact the the Brits threw Winnie out of office ASAP was an indication that they wanted to forget the war, and the debts they owed to the peoples in the rest of what was left of their empire.
I wouldn't hold my breath with Mr. Brown, if I was Mr Buckham.
“I’d say ‘Oh, no, it might be a bit hard but all you’ve got to do is just do your job’.”
Piece of cake.
I believe that all of Bomber Command suffered a 50% death rate amongst their bomber crews.
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