It is particularly disappointing that Teddy Cranmer, in his letter last week, notwithstanding the representations that have been made to him, continues with his fallacious version of the Second World War and his attempt to airbrush the US forces from the history of the defence of this country.

He asserts that “British and Allied forces had already done the defensive part” by the time of Pearl Harbor. So he would have us believe that the continuing Battle of the Atlantic, in which more than 3,000 ships were sunk by U-boats and more than 70,000 lives lost, was not part of the defence of Britain. What arrant nonsense!

This aspect of the defence of the UK continued until the last days of the war. The US naval forces played a significant part in the Battle of the Atlantic, not least the capturing of U-505 with its Enigma machine and codebooks intact. Ergo the Americans contributed to the defence of Britain, and the wording on the commemorative monument is both correct, properly made and deserving of our respect.

Mr Cranmer acts otherwise. He comments somewhat snootily that he has never heard the UK/British Isles called ‘the island’. This may be unfamiliar to him, but there is widespread precedent for such usage.

Winston Churchill refers to ‘this island’ and ‘our island’ again and again in This Island Race. In the play Richard II, Shakespeare writes of ‘this sceptered isle’. Earlier still, Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars directs his attention to ‘the island’.

To refer to our land in the singular is a linguistic style

well suited to oratory and ­monumental inscription.

That the monument is by Americans for Americans is hardly surprising, and there

is nothing wrong in that. We

are honoured to have it in Dartmouth. However, the ill-made and ill-timed comment on the wording is deeply insulting to our Allies and embarrassing for us – it brings our town into disrepute and should be exposed for what it is, a hyper-sensitive over-reaction based on a faulty idealised Forever Ambridge recollection of the conduct of the war by those who should know better.

Brian Parker

Crossparks

Dartmouth