My father was in Nightfighters for 4.5 years. Starting in Bostons, then Beaufighters with the earliest airborne radar and then Mosquitos. He and his pilot worshipped Harris to their last breath but both died before the monument in Green Park was finally made. The father of one my best friends was in the Hitler Youth because that was how it was and he lost family in Dresden. My father did go to Dresden - but not on that particular big raid.
His parents died in October 1944 when a V2 landed on their surburban house five miles south of Heathrow. So my father did what had to be done with what they had. Yet my father had a lot of sympathy for the German people and how they had been lied to and bad things done in their name - just as over here and in all wars and continues to this day. For father and his pilot, Harris was second in importance only to the King and he was always bitter how the politicians threw him to the dogs and did not give him the credit for his work, the way other commanders were. He did what he was asked to do. They also had huge respect for the Luftwaffe and, in the 1980s, became friends with a German Night Fighter pilot.
My father and his pilot did 3.5 tours, some 105 operations (without looking it up in his log books) and they both became DFC and three bars.
My father's pilot stayed on, gained the DSO and rose to Air Commodore.
It was war and the first victim of war is always??.