Sir – My father was a coalface miner aged 20 when the First World War started in 1914.

Like so many of his former soldier colleagues, he wished to serve King and country from home and abroad in the trenches. He gained gallantry and campaign medals but his life thereafter, like that of many others, was ruined by war wounds and, in his case, loss of his left arm by amputation above the elbow.


There were many with even more serious problems and limb amputations: and prosthetic artificial replacement limbs then were not as good or as efficient as the ones available today.


Many survivors from their ‘war to end all wars’ found that their sons also volunteered to serve in the Second World War but some were aircrew in Bomber Command and, like their fathers, suffered in turn from war wounds, amputations and from imprisonment as POWs, although they survived.
We lost more than 56,000 aircrew casualties in BC, an outstanding number among losses in all allied commands but our PM told us that we only deserved a clasp instead of a belated campaign medal.


We are now advised  by the media that someone named Tony Caplin owed considerable unpaid taxes and was reluctant to declare his bankruptcy and resignation as he should have done.


This has been the cause of much media comment concerning possible “misjudgement” on the part of our PM. Is this not yet another case of “misjudgements” made by this PM who was reportedly responsible for Caplin’s appointment as chairman of the committee making the allocation of specified public funds within the Treasury amounting to billions?
Will the PM, Sir John Holmes and the HD Committee now admit that the clasp only award made in December 2012 in place of a well deserved full campaign medal was due to “mismanagement”, and will they now take all steps necessary to ensure that this will happen?
Wg Cdr A J Wright DFC RAF (Ret), Abingdon