On 15 April 2013, in an emotional ceremony at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, the Government of Canada unveiled an enlarged image of a small piece of silvery metal not much bigger than one half centimetre by three centimetres – the Royal Canadian Air Force's Bomber Command Clasp.

The “Clasp”, as tiny and seemingly insignificant as it looks, is a deeply powerful symbol of respect and gratitude to a fast disappearing group of Canadian men who undertook a complex task with appallingly mortal risk, with steadfast determination despite well-understood consequences and with profound strategic consequences for the war effort. Of all Allied military service units – Army, Navy or Air Force – the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command suffered the highest rate of death and injury. The aircrews knew it, yet they persisted in their profoundly unenviable task... to the death for many, and in the case of the surviving aircrew, without proper recognition for their service. Nearly 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the government of Canada, with the support of the Air Force Association of Canada and individuals like Member of Parliament Laurie Hawn and former commander of the RCAF, Lieutenant General William Keir Carr, have paid tribute to those young Canadians of so long ago and have begun the process of healing long open wounds.

As Second World War dictator Joseph Stalin was reported to have said, “Quantity has a Quality all its own.” In no other Allied combat service of the war did this old adage apply quite like the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command. There were 125,000 aircrew members active in Bomber Command during the war. Of these thousands of young men, mostly volunteers, 55,573 were killed on operations, 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. The death rate was a breathtaking 44.5%. To put this into perspective, the United States Army Air Force's 8th Air Force – the Mighty Eighth – had 350,000 aircrew members of which 26,000 were killed in combat – a 7.45% death rate, which was a terrible price to pay, but one that pales in comparison to that of Bomber Command. An airman of the Command had a worse chance of surviving the fight than a British officer in the hideous and obscene trench fighting of the First World War. The chance of surviving a full tour of 30 ops with a Bomber Command squadron was down to 16%. Even before operations, men were killed in training before joining Bomber Command – some 5,327 men met their deaths in training accidents alone.

If you randomly picked 100 airmen from the ranks of Bomber Command, 55 would have died on operations or later of their wounds, 3 would have been injured on ops, 12 would have been taken prisoner, 2 would have been shot down but would have evaded capture and only 28 would have survived one tour of operation. A staggering 364,514 operational sorties were flown by aircrews of Bomber Command, dropping more than a million tons of bombs and, in the process of duty, losing 8,325 aircraft of all types. Of the 55,573 men who were killed in action, 18% (more than 10,000) were Canadian boys.

After the war, Bomber Command aircrew were eligible to be awarded the 1939–1945 Star, for a minimum of active service on operations. To compare, it was issued to Army and Navy combatants after six months of active service, and only after two months in the Air Force… a testament to the perceived risks inherent in aerial battle. This is the same Campaign Medal eligible to combat cooks, intelligence officers, truck drivers and headquarters staff. If an aircrew member of Bomber Command was able to survive two more months (60 days) of combat operations over Europe, he would be eligible for the Air Crew Europe Star. This Campaign medal/star, however, was not awarded to any aviator after D-Day. Given the horrendous survival rate of men in Bomber Command, a low percentage made it to eligibility status for the Air Crew Europe Star. Also, the highest percentage of surviving members of Bomber Command came from the group of airmen entering the war around the time of D-Day and afterwards. These men could not receive the Air Crew Europe Star even if they survived a year on operations.

Given the astronomical death rate and yet success of the Bomber Command operational record – from ops over Berlin to the submarine pens at Lorient to the dams of the Ruhr, aircrews pressed on and achieved remarkable successes in a technically imprecise science, facing and accepting death by horrid means as the price they were asked to pay. In the end, they were grouped with all other combatants for honours and “gongs”. While this would have remained all they asked for, certain other groups of deserving aviators and other warriors were singled out for additional honour – in the form of a “bar” or “clasp” to be attached to either their 39–45 Star or their Volunteer Service Medal. Such bars of honour were most deserved for the groups involved. There is a Battle of Britain Clasp presented to fighter pilots of that most famous of aerial battles, and which was awarded to all eligible as early as 1945 – immediately after the war. There is a clasp for those Canadians (Ground, Sea and Air) who were at Dieppe and for those Canadians who survived the Battle of Hong Kong, one of the first engagements with the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

While there is no doubt that the men to whom these honours were awarded were deserving of such recognition (and even more), it has been a source of heartbreak and wounded pride that the survivors and casualties of Bomber Command were overlooked for a much-deserved special recognition. The aerial battles in the night skies over France and Germany were epic, and like the Battle of the Atlantic, they raged continuously from 1939 to 1945. Rightly so, the 36,000 Commonwealth sailors who were killed in action and the survivors of the Battle of the Atlantic were accorded something even higher than a clasp – their very own Campaign medal – the Atlantic Star. In fact any airman on Coastal Command operations in the Atlantic for more than 60 days was eligible for the prestigious Atlantic Star.

So why have the surviving members of Bomber Command been passed over for almost 70 years? The sad truth is that these brave young men were simply political pawns in an enduring and sometimes nasty discourse on the efficacy and even moral rectitude of the campaign itself. I won't get into this un-winnable discussion about civilian casualties, the expedition of the war, the effect on German morale and weapons manufacture in Nazi-held territory and the politics of hindsight. What I will say is simply that these men have always deserved a special form of recognition for their fortitude and honour in the face of the very worst of possible outcomes – almost certain death. Canada, the RCAF and the RAF recruited these volunteers, selected those who would become Bomber Command airmen, trained them and then sent them on the most dangerous operations of the war. Aircrews understood these risks completely, for they watched their friends meet fiery deaths daily. Still, they went forward into the aerial breech. They fought hard, did their jobs, took the fight to the enemy's house when no one else was and they died at astounding rates. And then they were ignored.

It has to hurt to see all your deserving comrades in arms from other campaigns be received with open arms, with the respect they are due, with honour and recognition, and yourself to be largely pushed aside for political reasons. The Canadians of Bomber Command who came back from the war have long been wishing for a small token of respect, something that they could wear with pride, something that would speak to their extremely difficult hardships… to their 55,573 fallen comrades in particular.