'For what?' WWII vet's indictment of UK haunts first Veterans Day after his passing

Veterans Day — celebrated as Remembrance Day elsewhere in the Anglosphere — was haunted this year by some veterans' uncertainty about whether their efforts and the sacrifice of their comrades translated into improvements for their respective nations.Alec Penstone was 15 years old and working in a factory when World War II kicked off.'Our country's going to hell in a handbasket.'After the Germans started bombing London, Penstone volunteered as an air raid precautions messenger — a role in which he found himself occasionally pulling his countrymen's bodies out of the rubble.The Briton, whose father had been grievously wounded in the trenches of the previous world war by friendly fire, soon joined the Royal Navy, serving as an able seaman on D-Day and beyond on submarines and an escort aircraft carrier. He also participated in arctic convoys, then shipped east to fight the Japanese.In a crushing interview he gave last November with "Good Morning Britain," Penstone — then 100 years old — reflected on the decayed state of the country for which he fought and for which his friends gave their lives.RELATED: 'Dark times': Tommy Robinson faces 10 years for giving reporters a taste of their own medicine Alec Penstone. LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images."I can see in my mind's eye, there was rows and rows of white stones of all the hundreds of my friends and everybody else that gave their lives. For what? The country of today? No, I'm sorry," said Penstone. "The sacrifice wasn't worth the result that it is now.""What we fought for was our freedom," continued the veteran. "Now, it's a downside worse than what it was when I fought for it."Penstone died in May at the age of 101. The Veterans' Foundation (U.K.) stated at the time, "Alec represented a generation whose sacrifice and commitment must never be forgotten."On Wednesday, footage of Penstone's bleak assessment made the rounds again on social media. Penstone was hardly alone in casting doubt on whether the West of today is worth the blood of yesteryear.Don Poole is a 102-year-old veteran who served in the British Home Guard during the war, then with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in India.Investigative journalist Steven Edginton asked Poole in an interview published on Wednesday whether, in view of the state of the United Kingdom today, the war was worth fighting.The veteran answered, "It was worth fighting for because it got rid of, shall we say, the worst evil the world had ever seen for centuries and centuries. So it was worth fighting for that. But what happened afterwards — what was allowed to happen afterwards? It wasn't worth fighting for.""If war was to break out tomorrow," continued the veteran, "it wouldn't be worth fighting for this country."Poole — who earlier in the interview criticized the United Kingdom's decision to admit millions of migrants from India, Pakistan, and other third-world nations — suggested the country wasn't worth fighting for in part because of its infiltration by criminal "scum" from abroad.RELATED: Diversity is our strength? Britain has to remind migrants: Don't rape kids Like Poole, Carl Spurlin Dekle — a proud sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps who fought in the Pacific during World War II — made waves by expressing vexation with post-war developments in his nation.The Silver Star recipient told WTVT-TV before his passing at the age of 100 in 2022, "People don't realize what they have. They bitch about it.""Nowadays, I am so upset that the things we did and the things we fought for and the boys that died for it — it's all going down the drain. Our country's going to hell in a handbasket," said Dekle. "We haven't got the country we had when I was raised. Not at all."Dekle said that Americans today won't have the opportunities or the fun he had growing up.Breaking into tears, Dekle said, "That's not what they died for." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!