Classic British Flight Sim

I dunno about the ATC mate.. I did 16 years in the 'Andrew' (73-89) and I don't feel comfortable about wearing a 'Veterans' badge or even applying for one :think: I consider my dad to be a veteran (North Sea/Murmansk and Malta convoys).. nothing I did comes close to this

ATB

DaveB :tab:

TBH, Veteran's Day is for all servicemen, serving or having served. In the US, the term "Veteran" is a term of anyone currently or previously having service in the armed forces whether or not they've seen combat.

The choice of the word 'Veteran' by the UK Govt. was not a good one possibly conjuring up an image of very ancient WW1 old soldiers in the minds of the general public. A great many who claimed that badge were National Servicemen who served throughout the world 1945-1961 and who had received no government recognition of their service until the Veterans Badge became available. It is true that many past NS feel the same as Dave B and compare their post WW2 experiences with those of their father or close relations in WW2 and will never apply for that badge.

For Dave B:
I do see how you feel about applying for a UK Veterans badge in view of you father's experiences. You might like to view the difference between your own RN experience and that of your Dad as a difference in timing. Your father went through a very difficult wartime period of service while you went through a long period of RN service during which there was no outward armed conflict between the major powers. However if the Cold War (1945-87) had become a rather more aggressive affair you might very well have had to undertake duties which would have been directly comparable to your father's experiences during WW2.

In total I served in uniform as a regular in the RAF, a volunteer in a TA armoured recce regt and the RAFVR for a total of 12+ years. We were almost sent to Berlin at the time of the building of the wall but thankfully common sense prevailed and we stayed in the UK. Soviet A/T missiles would have made short work of our Dingos and Ferrets! However circumstances can change exceedingly quickly and my service life - like everyone else in the forces could have been quite different. I was lucky and never had to fire a shot in anger.

I have always held the belief that most citizens of a country should be prepared to serve that country in some way or another whether this be in the armed services, the police force, the fire or ambulance services or the hospital service. the Swiss have a very good 'citizens army' policy to this day. In that country every man will become a 'veteran.'

I had two near misses, as a five year old sheltering under the stairs a doodle-bug wing hit our chimney deflecting the main body of the missile such that it blew up a house on the opposite side of our road killing the sole occupant. By the way in bombed out buildings usually the staircase remained in situ after the bomb damage - we didn't know that we might have died because any explosion and resultant fire would have consumed all the available oxygen!

The second squeak was in 1970 in NI where I was working as a consultant - another near miss.