Thread by @Maxmycat

A letter from a friend to @MattHancock
Dear Mr Hancock
I am a 61 yr old retired NHS GP who has now has chosen to live in France. I am sending a copy of this email to my own MP.
During the summer leadership campaign you used the memory of D-Day soldiers

& clearly stated that the prorogation of Parliament would go against "everything that those men who waded on to those beaches fought and died for" you went on to say "and I will not have it"
My late father was not involved directly with the D-Day landings. I will tell you why.

He joined the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards as an 18 yr old in the summer of 1938 and was amongst the first to be posted to Europe with the BEF. In 1940 he & two of his closest friends from Manchester were defending a canal position in Belgium against the advancing German Army.

My father was a Bren gunner. They saw a mortar bomb approaching them which exploded. His best friends head and brains landed on my father's lap. His other friend lost both eyes. My father suffered serious injuries to his left arm but survived.
They were all 20 years old.

He was evacuated on a horse truck towards Dunkirk along small Belgium roads along with many civilians. Their column was attacked by German Stuka dive bombers. He survived because his cart was between the path of the bullets fired into the people from these planes. He witnessed

dozens of children and women slaughtered in front of him.
These images never left him. He told me that in all of his time in The Guards this was the only time he felt scared because he was unable to fight back against the planes. He was simply waiting to die.

He survived. On arriving at Dunkirk he was eventually put on to a large vessel which once again became the target for the German Stuka planes. His ship was hit by a bomb which failed to explode. He spent 1 year in a Military Hospital

but was not fit enough to rejoin his battalion although he was able to work at the Guards Training Depot. Many of his colleagues from 1940 were either killed or wounded in 1944 during action in Italy. He was not fit enough

to be one of the men whose memory you evoked during your campaign to be Prime Minister. I'm sure you understand why. My father had never told anyone of these experiences until towards the end of his life when he told me and he cried so much. He felt guilty

that he had survived and so many hadn't. I am not telling you this because I think his story is exceptional. It is not. There are thousands with similar or far worse memories. I am telling you this because the one thing that gave him comfort from these nightmares

was that he felt he was playing a role in defending the UK's representative democracy against fascism.
It would have been my father's 100th birthday last week.
He was a mild mannered man but would have been outraged by the way you have used his generations sacrifice as a tool to

further your own career but then abandon them once it hadn't done so.
He would have labelled you as a coward and he would have been right.
You should be ashamed of what you have done.
I have nothing else to say.
Yours sincerely