The Last Dambuster.
Chugalug (#11729),
Well said, Sir ! As I emaied to a relaiive who'd drawn my attention to the interview:
..."Then I hunted down Johnny Johnson, the last Dambuster - another eye-opener. Calm and rational despite his years, he answered his interviwer politely enough, even though he was being needled with the BBC revisionist "Butcher Harris" claptrap that passes for history nowadays (and, I suppose, is taught in schools).
Oh, the poor innocent civilian Germans in Hamburg and Dresden ! How they must have suffered ! How could we have done such cruel things ? .... Pardon me ? How about the poor folk of Rotterdam, London, Coventry and a dozen other places. "When you prick them, do they not bleed ?"
Firstly, as my old Uncle Laurie (ex-WWI trenches) expressed it: "When the scrap-iron starts flying about, EVERYBODY'S liable to get hurt". Then I put it on Pprune (for this very question has been thrashed out there): "Harris would've liked a rapier - but all he had was a club !" (you have to fight a war with what you've got - not with what you would like to have). Harris himself put in a nutshell with this Biblical (?) quotation: "They have sown the Wind ... They will reap the Whirlwind". And they did !"...
Danny.