The Abrasive Bomber Harris

Bomber Command and German Night Fighters are for obvious reasons tied together. The Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief at Bomber Command HQ between early 1942 and up to the end of the war was the controversial, abrasive and able Arthur Travers Harris, known to posterity as "Bomber Harris", although his contemporaries knew his as "Bert" while his air crews referred to him as "Butcher" or just "Butch". Much has been said and written about this man, the levelling of German cities, and his oftimes boorish behaviour. His intense dislike of the British Army and the Royal Navy did not help him make friends outside the Royal Air Force, but on the other hand, he did not seem to need that many. As for the Army, he often claimed that they wouldn't understand the value of tanks until they could "eat hay and shit". He also enjoyed driving his Bentley at reckless speeds between Bomber Command HQ at High Wycombe and the Air Ministry in Londin, and one late night he was actually pulled over by a police constable on a motorcycle. The police officer told him that "you might have killed somebody, sir", to which Harris snapped: "young man, I kill thousands of people every night". It should be noted that Harris was dismissed as soon as the war ended.

Harris' abrasive comments were not limited to the armed forces. Striding into the Air Ministry one morning, he passed one of the most senior civil servants with a bluff greeting of "morning, Abrahams, and what have you done to impede the war effort today?" Even Winston Churchill did get his dose of remarks from Harris. One morning, Churchill growled testily that "I'm sick of these raids on Cologne". Harris barked back that "so are the people of Cologne".

Some readers might argue that Harris should have borne the name of the Vice-Chief of Air Staff, Sir Douglas Evill, although we must assume that the stress is on the second syllable.

(Max Hastings, Bomber Command, Churchill's Epic Campaign).