...and his aircrew got just the same campaign medal after D-Day as those in the rear Army echelons.
On the question of a Bomber Command Campaign medal, was not the Aircrew Europe Star intended to cover all air operations flown from UK Bases?
Chugalug is actually correct,
Finningley Boy. The France and Germany Star replaced the Aircrew Europe Star for ops flown from 6th June 1944 on. However to describe it as the medal awarded to army rear echelons is to ignore the fact that it was also awarded to British and Commonwealth soldiers who fought their way from the beaches of Normandy to Berlin and who dropped and fought at Arnhem and on the Rhine crossing. Tens of thousands of them were killed or wounded in the process, so there is no question of the France and Germany Star being an inferior medal
Trying to get back on thread, actually the Irish issued a rather interesting series of medals for service during "the emergency" as the unpleasantless elsewhere was called. One was for the Irish Mercantile Marine, which in spite of its neutrality still lost many ships sunk at German hands with attendant loss of life. Because of the reduced danger of their being torpedoed, Irish merchant vessels often stopped to pick up survivors of sunken ships and saved hundreds of allied lives in the process. There is a memorial plaque to Irish merchant seamen lost at sea 1939-45 in the National Arboretum in Staffordshire.