The following letter was published in The Daily Telegraph on June 3, after an earlier correspondent had drawn attention to the hugely important role played by this great naval commander in World War 2.
SIR - It is good to read praise for Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (Letter, June 1), who oversaw the Dunkirk evacuation and masterminded all the major Allied seaborne invasions of Nazi-occupied land during the Second World War.
His immense but neglected contribution to victory, largely ignored by Churchill in his influential history of the conflict, was one of the principal themes of a debate in the Lords on June 4 2019, marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day. His death in a plane crash on January 2 1945 was described by Tommy Lascelles, George VI’s private secretary, in his diary as “a great loss to the Navy, and to the world. I liked him particularly.”
Like many heroes, Ramsay was modest about his achievements, writing to his wife after D-Day that the praise he received “only serves to remind one of the many people on whom success depended quite as much if not more than on myself.”
There is a statue of him in Dover. There ought to be another outside Southwick House in Portsmouth, where he planned the greatest armada in modern history and gave the order for its departure. He should also be commemorated in Whitehall like other leading Allied commanders, with whom he belongs.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
