Veterans' perspective on the war

April 14, 2008
Editor
NATIONAL POST, Toronto
Dear Sir,
Veterans' perspective on the war
All veterans who volunteered for combat roles in the Second World War deserve the admiration that your correspondent Gary McGregor has expressed towards his "Uncle Jack" who risked his life in Aircrew in the War to Save Civilization.  Not all Veterans however, upon reflection, would agree that the War on our German kinfolk was unequivocally a Noble Cause or that the Allied record in conducting the War was without blemish.
The CBC's controversial film "The Valour and the Horror", reflected in the War Museum's sign questioning the deliberate slaughter of German civilians, prompted an outcry by former RCAF members, almost all of whom disparaged the documentary as insulting and untrue, at least in its implication that the Aircrews wittingly committed mass murder.  Among the Veterans' submissions was one from Wing Commander C. G. "Giff" Gifford, of St. John, N.B., whose RCAF Squadron took part in the bombing of Dresden in 1945, when the war in effect was already won.  He wrote that the Briefing Officer for the raid announced: "We have a real juicy one for you tonight, gentlemen, it's Dresden - and it's packed with refugees".  Indeed it was, and many tens of thousands of mothers with children, fleeing for their lives from the rapacious Red Army, were incinerated in the intensive fire-bombing, along with an irreplaceable treasure-trove of Europe's finest baroque architecture. 
Gifford confided to a friend, not long before he died, that the remorse of having been a party to the mass murder of innocent Christian civilians had haunted him every day of his life.
As for the relative wisdom of Vets and historians, there can be no question that the Vets had the better grasp of military actions in which they were directly involved, but, for better or for worse, they were kept in the dark regarding the political maneuvering that was responsible for their plight and had no opportunity to analyze in depth the worthiness of their cause nor the validity of command decisions that would seal their fate.  Many, facing death on the ground or in the air, would have had second thoughts had they known that treacherous politicians had ensured that Stalin, a far greater threat to Christian civilization than Hitler, would be the main beneficiary of their sacrifice.  Nor could they have known that acquisitive warmongers in high places, beholden to secret paymasters, would perpetuate conflict and oppression -ultimately forfeiting the precious freedoms and security the young idealists had fought so courageously to preserve.
Yours sincerely,
Ian V. Macdonald
ex-RCAF, RNFAA