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World War II: Bomber Command

My Lords, as someone much swept up in the events of 1942 to 1944, latterly at what might be described as the sharp end, perhaps I may make three points. First, however much we may now regret having had to reduce so many German cities to ruins, there is no doubt that the bomber offensive by night by Bomber Command and by day by the US Eighth Air Force made a major contribution to writing down the German war effort, making it difficult for the Germans to go on sustaining their armed forces against the Soviet Union and latterly against the forces they faced from the west. That shortened the war because Hitler would never have surrendered. More than that, because those offensives put so much pressure on the Luftwaffe to counter them, by 1944 the Luftwaffe as a potential weapon of war had virtually ceased to exist, which as much as anything else made the Normandy invasion possible, for which I personally was very grateful, otherwise it would have been hazardous in the extreme. Finally, against that background, and bearing in mind that statistically service as air crew in Bomber Command during the war years was by far the most dangerous assignment for the armed services who served in the front line, it seems more than appropriate that they should have special recognition, perhaps in the form of a special rosette on their Air Crew Europe medal.