Category: Stand & Deliver
Its a pity that they were not given to West Point or the US Army Museum. But that’s just me! Grumpy
100-Year-Old Veteran on Live TV: We Fought WW II for Nothing, Britain Less Free Than in 1945
A centenarian Royal Navy veteran took full advantage of an appearance on live television to express his sorrow at the state of modern Britain, saying he and his comrades fought for freedom that has been frittered away, eliciting what critics called a “patronising” response by show hosts.
Royal Navy and Arctic Convoy veteran Alec Penstone told Britain’s ITV breakfast show “the sacrifice wasn’t worth” what the country has since become, mourning the loss of freedom he and his friends fought and died for.
Appearing on Good Morning Britain on Friday for a segment on the upcoming Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day on November 11th, Penstone was asked what the events commemorating fallen troops from the two World Wars meant, and what his message to the country now is.
Far from the feel-good sentiments the piece had evidently been set up for, 100-year-old Penstone remarked: “I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones.
“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.”
Comedian Adil Ray, best known for creating Citizen Khan, a BBC comedy about a “British Pakistani” family living in “the capital of British Pakistan” — Birmingham, England — quickly interjected to ask of the veteran: “what do you mean by that, though?”.
Penstone continued: “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”.
Ray’s co-host Kate Garraway, a former journalist and news presenter, placed her hand on Penstone’s shoulder and reassured him that people of her generation did appreciate the sacrifice of the veteran and his friends, before announcing that he was to be presented with a compact-disc of Second World War-era popular music in thanks.
British academic Professor David Betz was among those responding to the turn of events, calling Penstone’s remarks “heartbreaking” and the response from the television hosts “patronising” and “simply infuriating”.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron (L) greets 98-year-old British D-Day veteran Alec Penstone during the UK Ministry of Defence and the Royal British Legion’s commemorative ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the World War II “D-Day” Allied landings in Normandy France, on June 6, 2024. (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
According to a profile by the Royal British Legion, a prominent veterans organisation, Penstone was a young man when the Second World War broke out and initially volunteered as a messenger for the Air Raid Precautions organisation in London during the height of the Blitz.
He said of his time in London during some of the worst bombing of the war: “The moments at 15 years of age, pulling bodies out of bombed buildings you grow up very quickly.”
His father, a veteran of the Great War, made Penstone vow not to serve in an infantry role due to the horrors he’d witnessed in the trenches in the Great War. So he joined the Royal Navy as a submarine-detector, and ended up in one of the most deadly assignments of the Second World War, on the Arctic Convoys. He also served in mine sweeping to clear the sea ready for the D-Day landings, and in the far east, fighting Japan.
The Imperial War Museum states of the Arctic Convoys delivering materiel to the Soviet Union to help them fight Nazi Germany:
Conditions were among the worst faced by any Allied sailors. As well as the Germans, they faced extreme cold, gales and pack ice. The loss rate for ships was higher than any other Allied convoy route.
Over four million tons of supplies were delivered to the Russians. As well as tanks and aircraft, these included less sensational but still vital items like trucks, tractors, telephone wire, railway engines and boots.
While appearing on television today, Mr Penstone was seen wearing the distinctive white beret and badge of the Arctic Convoy Club, a veterans organisation for survivors which disbanded in 2005, given it had so few surviving members.
On his left breast he wore a rack of British medals from his war service including the 1939-45 Star, the Atlantic Star, the Arctic Star, the Pacific Star for service in Burma, and Defence Medal for his service in the ARP.
Separately on a red ribbon, Penstone wore the insignia for a Knight of the Légion d’honneur for role in liberation of France. In 2024, Penstone was personally greeted by French President Emmanuel Macron and thanked for his service.
On his right breast, Penstone wore several Russian Medals including Medal of Ushakov for convoys, and USSR-era convoy medals.
While these are not authorised for wear by Britons in uniform, it is normal practice for British veterans of the Arctic Convoys to wear them on the right breast in this way.
While Alexander the Great is generally considered one of the Worlds Great Captains. He did fuck up a few times in the field just like everyone else.
One of these fubars was by marching his Army thru the dessert of South Iran. (Because his troops would not invade India and instead wanted to go home.So he punished them by doing this.)
Well as you can guess, The Army quickly ran out of water. But then a small amount was found and offered to the King. At the point old Al took the helmet full of water. Went to where everyone could see him and poured it out.
After that his troops would follow him anywhere.
Part utilitarian, part shrine, almost furniture: Grandpa’s gun cabinet always held fascinating treasures.
Even better, every item had its own special backstory.
Let’s face it — your gun safe is boring. Mine too, for many of the same reasons I’ll explain. It’s full of matte-black polymer rifles, a few optics you bought because some guy on YouTube told you to, and a mountain of gizmos you don’t really need.
Old school
Grandpa’s gun cabinet? It wasn’t so much about storage but more like a shrine — an oak-and-glass monument to a time when guns had a different role, hard-earned character, a certain aura and, above all, stories.
This short pontification is inspired by a recent GUNS Magazine Podcast. In episode #298, Roy Huntington and I discussed the changes in gun culture over the years and were instantly reminded — yet again — some AR owners don’t accept anything less than glowing praise about their favorite “weapon system.” Roy and I have taken every possible pain to explain we don’t hate ARs; in fact, between us, we probably have several dozen, yet the angry comments keep coming.
Guns such as grandpa’s Lefever Nitro double-barrel 20 gauge have more character in their splinter fore-end
than an entire cabinet full of black rifles — never mind the stories it represents!
In such remarks, the writers are unconsciously reinforcing the negative stereotypes of certain shooters as they completely miss the point by at least 50 MOA.
What we were trying to analyze is the significant changes in how shooters relate to firearms nowadays. There is nothing wrong with our “modern” gun culture, but anyone with an ounce of honesty will admit the all-encompassing black rifle and pistol craze has a dull, certain sameness. They’re useful, yes, and there is a certain beauty in function over form, but generally the word to describe them is “monotonous.”
Down home
Grandpa’s gun cabinet was so much different. Open the door and you were hit with the glorious sweet petroleum aroma of old-formula Hoppe’s No. 9, 3-in-1 oil, aged walnut and maybe a trace of cigar smoke. Your safe smells like plastic, silica packs and unfilled dreams.
Grandpa didn’t own five ARs that are identical except for different bolt carrier groups. His cabinet was the firearms version of the Whitman Sampler (look it up).
The stereotypical “load out” included a lever gun with honest bluing wear from countless deer seasons, a pump shotgun with a small crack in the stock that still dropped birds every fall, and a .22 rifle that taught three generations how to shoot. There was also a center-fire bolt-action rifle, maybe an old 98-pattern or a 1903 surplus Springfield. On these workaday guns, every nick, scratch and dent had a story attached.
Grandpa’s gun cabinet drawer often held a museum of old dog-eared, half-filled cartridge boxes,
each representing something interesting.
Even the ammo shelf was cooler. Grandpa stocked cartridges with names you’ve only heard of — .300 Savage, .257 Roberts, maybe a half-empty box of .32-20 that hadn’t been made since before you were born. These cartridges were for guns he used to own but (regretfully) sold years ago, while those partial boxes of ammo were kept “just in case.”
For pap, buying ammo wasn’t a bulk-online experience seeking the lowest cost per round of “commodity” calibers — it meant going to the hardware store and asking for a certain dusty green-and-yellow box behind the counter.
Furnishings
And there was the cabinet itself. It wasn’t a giant steel monolith hiding in the basement or closet. It was a piece of furniture, often prominent in the dining room or front hallway, with a plate-glass front and a tiny brass lock that wouldn’t stop a semi-determined raccoon.
The lock was primarily to keep the kids and other semi-honest people out of the guns without adult supervision, and it worked well, even though certain unkempt children wondered if a paper clip or bent wire would trip the simple mechanism.
Yet, I — sorry, I meant to say “those kids” — never tried it because it would break an important trust with somebody you never wanted to disappoint.
The glass front made a dangerous yet reassuring rattle when you opened it, a hollow jangling noise you can’t describe but one you’d recognize instantly. While not flashy, the whole thing was essentially a monument to the household armory. Grandpa wasn’t ostentatious, but he was quietly proud of his guns.
Ever “need” a 16-gauge bolt action Mossberg 190? The best place to find one was Grandpa’s gun cabinet!
Heart of the matter
The coolest thing about Grandpa’s cabinet wasn’t even the firearms within; it was the stories. When he opened that door, you didn’t just gain access to firearms—history came pouring out. “This one kept the coons out of the chicken coop back on the farm,” he pointed out.
Up until the 1950s, a fox or hawk snatching a chicken was nearly as serious as someone kidnapping a kid today because it meant soup for dinner. “This one’s been to deer camp every year since Eisenhower,” he said with a certain wistful tone, as you considered he hadn’t gone deer hunting in years. But, no matter…
Your safe just beeps angrily if you punch in the wrong code twice.
You’ll never know what you’ll find but treasures abound in Grandpa’s gun cabinet!
Long memories
Spend all you want on Cerakote, carbon fiber and aircraft aluminum, but you can’t buy Grandpa’s perspective, the experiences or the miles he put on those guns. His cabinet was cooler because it wasn’t just about what was inside — it was about the man who kept them, the history of a life he and his guns lived, and the stories he passed down every time he turned the little brass key.
My own grandkids will grow up with shooting memories of polymer handguns, beeping keypads and digital displays, but it just won’t be the same — and I think we’re all poorer because of it.
On this day in U.S. Army SF history………06 August 1967, eight Green Berets held off 4,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers in a hamlet and box canyon known as Tong Le Chong near the Cambodian/Vietnamese border, with help from air support.
This battle occurred over two days, responding to the urgent call for help, the pilot, Kenneth P. Miles, responded by flying his F-100 into that box canyon in the dark of night, below 500 feet, firing at the North Vietnamese Army soldiers. When he ran out of bombs and bullets, he returned to his base in Thailand, reloaded and returned for a second time. The NVA finally retreated, leaving behind 2,000 dead and/or injured. At the time, this was the largest battle in South Vietnam.
The US administration did not want the public to know that there were Green Berets working with South Vietnamese villagers in this area, so the incident was never fully reported. Three Bronze Stars were awarded to the Green Beret soldiers on the ground, and a Silver Star to Pilot Commander Kenneth P. Miles, who attained the rank of Major General later in his service career.
—Mud
P.S. The photo is a representation of the team.
