Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
Frankly, the definitive view on dropping the bomb for me comes from George Macdonald Fraser in 'Quartered Safe Out Here'. He was slogging through Burma with the 14th Army at the time, fighting a fanatical (if doomed) enemy that wanted to take as many of him and his mates with them as they could before dying. Given which, he regarded the bomb as a really very good thing indeed, since it meant he got to go home and have kids and grandkids - none of whom might have been born without it.
So lefties in peace and comfort can moralise about the bomb all they like. The fact is that they weren't faced with a likely choice between it and 50-odd more years more life. Those who were (and their loved ones) get the final say as far as I'm concerned.
You forget the fact that GMF the says that if his platoon had been asked whether to sit back, let the bomb happen and go home, or continue fighting the land war to avoid said destruction, he reckons they would have quietly stood up, picked up their rifles and packs without saying a word and gone out to continue the march South.

Just TBC, I disagree with GMF's lads on this. The Japs started the war and if nuking the fücking lot of them meant that just one more Sikh or Gurkha got to spend old age with his grand-kids, the govt which paid those Sikhs and Gurkhas their wages had a duty to do all in the power to protect them, even if it meant 50m dead Nips and the rest of them glowing green.

How could we tell the 2.5m Indian volunteers "Sorry, lads. We could win the war today but thousands more of you will have to die and you'll have to wait longer for independence because we're too squeamish to give the bāstards the slapping they deserve."?

It's a no-brainer. I fail to understand how any could think otherwise.