THE local faction of the revisionist historians' bandwagon rolls out regularly at this time of the year and Barry Mills (BEN, August 21) is the latest to jump on it.

He thinks Fred Shawcross is "partial or partisan". I doubt it.

But I am. Most of us who have been at the sharp end of man's inhumanity to man are.

Jack Rogers was a Welsh lad from Abergavenny.

He and I became Royal Air Force Halton apprentices as 16-year-olds in January 1935.

We were like brothers, soulmates, and fate kept us together in our service careers at home and abroad, even in Japanese POW camps.

Then, in late 1944, after 18 months on an island in the Moluccas, I was sent back to Java and a makeshift hospital in Batavia.

Jack died on the next draft back. The body of this tough little Jimmy Cagney lookalike finally succumbed to severe malnutrition and privation.

His body, bloated with oedema caused by beri-beri, was thrown into the Banda Sea, then bayoneted to sink it.

The corporal with him when he passed away came especially to see me as I recovered.

He said: "Your buddy's last words were to tell you that he had not just given in."

It would appear that some of your BEN correspondents on this matter are writing their own script and, at the same time, using emotive claptrap relating the victims in Japan to James Bulger.

The fact is that, in a conventional land army attack on Japan, hundreds of thousands would have been killed on both sides and the prisoners would have been the first to go.

Some bring the benefit of hindsight into the debate.

I can go along with that because, as I look back, I want to say to those who dropped the bombs -- what kept you!

Trevor T Mellows

Hughes Avenue

Horwich