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Bill Porteous and several tens of thousands like him strapped on parachutes and climbed into their aircraft on a
near-daily basis, with the certain knowledge that a great many of their number would be doing it for
the last time on any given evening. The figures for casualties are well covered elsewhere, so suffice it to say that
55 out of every 100 of these young men did not live to see the end of their tour of duty (30 sorties), let alone
the end of the Second World War. In fact, official statistics suggest that only 6 in 25 survived a tour unscathed.
It is only in recent times that I have begun to appreciate what the cost of my comfortable twenty-first century lifestyle really was, and to appreciate those who bore it.
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