Mystic Greg wrote
"You keep them, so instead of writing to you as:
'Group Captain J J Wwyvern OBE DFC RAF'
I might write to you as:
'J J Wwyvern, Esq, OBE DFC'"
In fact using their honourific is writing is as complicated as them using it themselves.
If it concerns letters to the local council, signed off Blimp, Col, Rtd, then they might be safely ignored unless it is a very small parish council (pond).
If it is someone military, or ex-military, writing to them then it is polite to use their honourific as Debrett's uses that form. For instance if a mess sec is writing to local kilingon's about the annual face fill jamboree.
It is a question of
social form really.
In what is an air force basing area rank awareness, and snobbery, is rife. We had someone on our parish council who did not use his rank, but was known to be some sort of retired sqn ldr. That rumour had started because he ran an 'organisation' that the locals, only partly clued up, believed would be run by a sqn ldr. Gradually as the truth about the retired warrant officer seeped out . . . Another officer retired as a 'wg cdr' and again got demoted when the truth leaked.
It even happened with more senior officer's wives although one ex whose ex now has 3*s got a job as a shelf stacker in the local supermarket. More of a statement really
