I REFER to Bert Hardwick's remarks (Letters, March 8), on Communism - which, for the record, I have never had any time.

Winston Churchill wrote many things but he was prone to inconsistency. The fact that a few cretins chose to scrawl slogans on walls was of no significance at all. At the time, the Second Front was little more than a dream and everyone knew it.

But if anyone owed a debt of gratitude to the Red Army it had to be Churchill. When the news came through that Hitler had invaded Soviet Russia, Churchill, on his own admission, slept for the first time in ages.

He now realised that, no matter how long it would take, Nazi Germany could be defeated - something he hadn't dared to admit even to himself.

It wouldn't be any exaggeration to say that, without the Red Army, Hitlers Germany may never have been defeated. Even with the advent of the Second Front, the number of German divisions deployed on the Eastern Front was four times that needed in the West.

Right from the start when the beleaguered Red Army faced up to the full might of Nazi Germany, the Russian people knew that they were fighting for Mother Russia and not for a despot like Stalin.

J P VERNON, Accrington Road, Blackburn.

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