“It's one of my greatest passions and one of the greatest achievements of my life……These very young, brave men sacrificed themselves, so we are able to live in a free Europe and it is important that this was recognised.”
Robin Gibb 2012
55 573 of 125 000 Bomber Command aircrew lost their lives, 9 838 became “POW’s” and 8 403 were wounded. At least 300 South Africans served as Bomber Command airmen an estimated 176 of whom lost their lives. No 9 Squadron Wellington pilot, Pilot Officer Harold Rosofsky the first to lose his life and the last, No 139 Squadron Pathfinder Mosquito pilot, 23-year-old Flight Lt Robert Ogilvie Day DFC, were coincidently educated at King Edwards in Johannesburg and frame names like Begbie, Bartholomew, Deas, Goodman, Hamman, Hirschfield , Howe-Brown, Lourens, McKendry, McGregor, Wing Commander JD Nettleton VC and Major Edwin Swales VC DFC.
Few if any surviving South Africans would have been fit to travel to London for the unveiling, but a lack of invitation evidence and no South African reference in the guest contingent, suggest the omission was either an unfortunate oversight given their fractional 0.0024% representation and 0.31% of the aircrew losses , politically motivated or an embarrassment given surviving South African Bomber Command airmen needed expensive visas to visit the island they risked their lives defending!
Worn on the 1939-1945 Star medal ribbon, the Bomber Command Clasp issued 67 years after Clement Atlee’s post war Labour Government blocked Air Marshal Harris’s Bomber Command medal campaigning was long past the point of disrespect for the few survivors ,but by then, mostly only a means of completing an inherited set of medals
From “Spirits in the Sky”, chapter 12 of Jon Eagar's book. About the book.