(LifeSiteNews) – A British morning show got an unexpectedly candid moment when it invited a 100-year-old World War II veteran to share his reflection on the sacrifices he and his countrymen made to stop the Axis Powers’ march across the globe.
British Royal Navy veteran Alec Penstone, who was part of the Allied forces that stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and the Arctic Convoys that delivered supplies to the Russians, appeared in full uniform on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, where he surprised hosts Kate Garraway and Adil Ray with his true reflections on the price of those battles.
“I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones,” he said. “All the hundreds of my friends, everybody else, who gave their lives. For what? The country of today. No, I’m sorry, the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now.”
Asked for elaboration, he said, “what we fought for was our freedom. We find that even now, it’s a darn sight worse than what it was when I fought for it.”
The presenters, clearly unprepared for such a harsh answer, could only reply with generic expressions of sympathy and appreciation.
Penstone, a widowed grandfather, later elaborated in an interview with the Daily Mail, reiterating, “I don’t know what the hell we fought for and lost so many wonderful men. The country has gone to rack and ruin. ‘There are too many people with their fingers in the till. Faith in our country was the best thing. But nowadays there’s too many people that just want their own little corner and bugger everybody else.
“I’m not against foreigners coming into the country provided they behave themselves,” he clarified, going on to express his admiration for British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a leader who “made sure what needed to be done was done.”
By contrast, he said, “there is no comparison whatsoever to the modern leaders. In this world today, it is every man for himself. I’ve got no feelings for any of them.”
While specific grievances vary, many share Penstone’s grim assessment of Britain and the level of freedom it enjoys. Mass immigration without assimilation has led to growing discontent over Islamist enclaves and the violence and extremism that has accompanied them, and numerous controversies have underscored the precarious state of freedom of expression in the nation, most recently a comedian who briefly faced charges for mocking transgenderism and an elderly woman who was visited by police in her home over social media posts.
In 2021, Prince Harry offered a window into the state of liberty in the British cultural psyche when he said he found the extent to which America protects speech “bonkers.”
“I don’t want to start going down the First Amendment route because that’s a huge subject and one which I don’t understand because I’ve only been here a short time, but you can find a loophole in anything,” he said. “You can capitalize or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said.”
