PATRICK Nicholls (column, February 18) is right about Lord Peter Wimsey, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, and crying in public.
But when people are playing for power they will do anything that people like Alastair Campbell tell them to.
I dislike crying in public, especially w hen I do it. I cry when I hear the sound of a Rolls-Royce Merlin, the aero engine in Hurricanes, Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Lancasters - such a distinctive sound that means more to the men and women, boys and girls of this island who survived the Second World War than almost any other sound. Sometimes I blub just thinking about it, but never make a noise.
I was born 25 miles south of London during paper bag printing the Battle of Britain, which I can't remember, but I probably picked up the local emotion at a very young age.
I remember real dogfights and vapour trails in the sky and cheering when an enemy plane went down.
I remember being beaten for breaking the blackout, hiding behind the curtains watching air raids, searchlights sweeping the darkness and picking out a German bomber, to be joined by more beams of light, and lots and lots of ack-ack - "son et lumiere" like that is unsurpassable. Not a show, but real life and death.
Omega Replica WatchesI remember a Sherman tank calling at our house on its way to the coast for D-Day. It got hit in France and the tall driver was killed because he couldn't get out in time. The Germans called Shermans "Tommy-cookers" because they had petrol engines.
I remember GIs and "got any gum, chum?" and being handed a chicken drumstick by a passing Yankee tank crew.
I remember the fighting men, mainly airmen, who used our house as a kind of club, and that some never came back.
catalog printingNo-one cried. Englishmen still had stiff upper lips. We were fighting to keep our freedom and we won that fight so that those who came in later could finish the war - but they would never have joined had we not won the first bit.
Tony Maskell Newton Ferrers
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