They should laugh at us because it would be part of laughing with us.

However for your part, there is nothing funny about defending sanitised revisions on behalf of the establishment.

The two world wars would be totally in vain if we don't try to learn from them. To perpetuate the myth that they were well led, thought out and carried out with the objective free will of the soldiers caught up in them is awful.   Truly fucking awful.

Have you no shame?

The military leaders in WW2 however did learn from the incompetence and slaughter of WW1. That's why the murderous technique of using our soldiers as cannon fodder was no longer an option. The stupidity of sacrificing men for the victory of a small field was roundly rejected as tactic.

Tell you what. When I visited a war cemetery the other year and saw "the countless white" I decided there and then that the poem that best sums up the whole mess was this one, presumably either Richard Curtis or Ben Elton wrote it.

Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom