Colonel Christopher Short of Barry, South Wales, says now get accolade for SAS’s Vince Phillips (From Hereford Times)

Colonel Christopher Short of Barry, South Wales, says now get accolade for SAS’s Vince Phillips

3:00pm Thursday 9th August 2012 in Letters

FOLLOWING on from the question to the Prime Minister David Cameron by Jesse Norman MP on the SAS and decorations, I wonder if he could take up the equally deserving cause of the late Vince Phillips.

Vince lies in St Martin’s SAS plot iin Hereford but it is a travesty and grave injustice that, like Sergeant Labalaba, the subject of Mr Norman’s question, he has not been awarded a posthumous decoration and indeed, in my and others’ opinion, is wrongly maligned as one of the causes of the failure of Bravo Two Zero in the Iraqi conflict.

His binoculars were recovered by an Iraqi farmer and ultimately returned, on an emotional occasion, to his family, and no doubt they now occupy a hallowed place among his memorabilia.

Every other member of the group of troopers inserted received a decoration; not so Vince. It is long overdue.

Please, Mr Norman, can you try to right this additional injustice?

COLONEL CHRISTOPHER SHORT, Barry, South Wales.