I blame John Wayne, Errol Flynn and Kenneth More. somewhere along the line the idea got around that you could win a war and be a bloody decent chap.

I can't really understand these people - maybe naivety is okay when you're young. but these are some of the quite grown up people who were quite hot to trot at the start of the war.

Years ago I used to give guitar lessons to this old guy who had been in the Phillipines campaign in WW2. I said that must have been awful - you hear such terrible stories of what the Japanese did to their prisoners.

he said, well they were one up on us - we didn't take prisoners and by an large we didn't waste bullets on them - we finished them off with our army boots.

maybe that was just the outfit he was with...........

however you have seen films of the bombing on European cities in WW2. The poor devils having bombs rained on them must have been largely innocent of any crime. If so, you can see that war is the ultimate horror, and once you are in it - the only imperative is to win.

I can't believe that this stuff really outrages anybody. war ain't nice and you are in one.