BRITISH YOUTH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 146, 22 June 1945, Page 5

BRITISH YOUTH

Bomber Command Chief Pays

Glowing Tribute

I OVER 47,000 WEKE KILLED British Official Wireless Rec. 1 p.m. RUGBY, June 21. "These lads faced more, I think — and faced it successfully—than any similar number of young men from this country have ever been ■ called upon to face before," Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, said of the young men in his command, speaking at a prize distribution at his old school, All Hallows, Rousdon, Devon. Sir Arthur said he had received high honours, but those honours were earned by the young men who manned the bombers. More than 100,000 passed through Bomber Command and over 47,000 were killed. . , Catastrophic casualties were suffered by the nation's youth in the last war and to have won this war at the same expense would have been almost as disastrous as defeat, he added. They had sent out champions to take the "edge" off the enemy and they had done that well. The proof of their success was that the British and Canadian armies, from the beaches of Normandy to the end of the war at Luneburg, lost fewer killed than were killed in one day in some battles of the last war. The war had given the answer to those who said the youth of the nation had become degenerate, Sir Arthur concluded.