LESLIE Wiles perhaps goes a little over the top in his letter regarding the Polish veterans memorial

(Letters, December 28).

I am no apologist for Communism, Russian or otherwise, but it should be born in mind that the Russian struggle against the Nazi armies was far and away the greatest of the entire Allied struggle in that theatre of war.

Losing more than 20 million people both military and civilian surely makes their contribution the most costly and certainly dwarfed that of any Allied effort, indeed of the Allied combined effort.

The denial of a place for the Poles in victory parades was not a cowardly act by Attlee and the Labour party he led, nor was it eternally shameful. Wrong, maybe, but neither cowardly nor shameful. Putting oneself in the then hapless position of our leaders after six years of enfeebling, costly and devastating war, might give one a more understanding and sympathetic view of the realities then existing.

It might be said that Mr Wiles' opinion is yet another of those sadly fashionable viewpoints emanating from a myopic re-writing of history born of the modern plague of PC ignorance.

After all, the Italians fought with the Nazis for four years, but a hell of a lot of us have holidayed there without too many qualms or criticisms.

Italian atrocities against their more primitive and helpless opponents in North and west Africa were many and well-documented. 

RON HILL

Yarpole