Letters
Pro patria
Sir: Does Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 16 June) really think that people of my generation and that of his father, whom I knew pretty well, so enjoyed the 1939-45 war that they would like us to have another? This seems difficult to believe, but appears to be what he means.
We didn't start the war. After 1914-18, notwithstanding all the grim signs of a second conflict, when it came, it still seemed almost incredible. But, as it was, we had no choice but to serve our country and, priggish though it may sound to Mr Waugh, this we were obliged to do. To suggest that we derived pleasure from having our friends and families killed, mutilated or taken prisoner — if we were lucky enough to be spared those things ourselves, though exposed to constant danger — seems to me incomprehensible. Peter Fleetwood-Hesketh
57 Great Ormond Street, London WC1
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