Sir – It is a coincidence that Anzac Day on April 25 will be commemorated this year so close to the public meeting in Ottawa Canada, on Monday, April 15, to discuss the confused state of belated Second World War Canadian national and British international campaign medal and clasp awards for Second World War Bomber Command (BC) and, on April 17, the historic international “almost state funeral” of Baroness Thatcher, a former British Prime Minister and patriot known as the Iron Lady.


One has to wonder whether the current drive for a BC campaign medal which dates from 2005 and which started in Canada and became a worldwide drive, well supported by many of our old British Empire or Dominion or Commonwealth cousins and volunteers from countries occupied by Nazi Germany, would have been more strongly supported had we started our drive in the days when the Iron Lady had just won her third General Election? And when there were so many more BC veterans and their next of kin still alive then?


My guess is that she would have strongly supported the awards of a full campaign medal for both the Arctic Star and the Bomber Command campaign medal.


And there would then have been no discussion about the possible cost, as stressed at his briefing to Sir John Holmes on appointment on April 30, 2012, as independent chairman of the military medals review panel in the Second World War.
Jim Wright, Abingdon