War veteran Alec Penstone died in May this year, aged 101.
This week, as the UK honours its fallen soldiers, a year-old TV clip of him is going viral once again on social media.
The British mark Remembrance Day every year on 11 November, the day on which the armistice that ended the First World War came into force in 1918. People wear red poppies on their jackets, and on the second Sunday in November, wreaths are laid across the country.
It was just before this Sunday last year that Penstone appeared in the studio on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Presenter Kate Garraway asked the former naval veteran what the day meant to him.
The answer she received was not what she had expected.
– I picture row upon row of white gravestones, and all those hundreds of my friends who gave their lives. For what? The country as it is today? No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result,’ said Penstone.
Co-presenter Adil Ray wanted to know what he meant. Penstone replied that it was freedom they were fighting for, and that things are in a far worse state today than they were in his day.
Garraway said she was sorry he felt that way. She believed it was now up to the younger generations to make the country the one he had fought for.
Penstone was 15 when the war broke out, and he worked as a messenger in London during the bombing raids. There, he helped carry the dead and the wounded out of the ruins. Later, he became a submarine listener in the Royal Navy, aboard the escort aircraft carrier HMS ‘Campania’. On D-Day, the ship was tasked with keeping German submarines away from the invasion fleet. He also took part in ten and a half convoys to the Arctic.
He never elaborated on what he actually meant by his statement.
Penstone himself was unsure whether he had become famous or infamous after uttering these words of truth.
