LEST THE SNOWFLAKES FORGET

THOSE colour photographs in yesterday’s Mail of British soldiers on the Western Front during World War I were haunting.

The young men in the pictures were our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers, many of whom would never return. Yet in the film restored by Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson they appear jaunty and ebullient in the face of the dangers ahead.

It may well have been bravado, but contrast their good humour with today’s self-obsessed snowflakes, roughly the same age as the soldiers who served and died at the Somme. Shamefully, the students’ union at Cambridge is trying to wreck plans to commemorate the sacrifice of those who fought in World War I, banning poppies and the traditional one minute’s silence. Spoilt millennials appear to have nothing but contempt for earlier generations who gave their lives to ensure our modern freedoms.

These pathetic, right- on, playground radicals should study those photographs from the front line and be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Heaven help us if we are ever called upon to fight another world war. Having spoken at CiD dinners and been humbled by the courage of young coppers presented with bravery awards, i am reluctant to accuse any officer of cowardice. But how else are we supposed to judge the actions of acting Met Commissioner Craig Mackey, a one-man risk assessment form, who locked himself in a car while one of his officers was being stabbed to death in front of him outside the House of Commons? i have little to add to the eloquent condemnation of Mackey by ex-Chief Superintendent Philip Flower in Wednesday’s Mail. Mackey is retiring with a knighthood, on a full pension, which is more than can be said for his heroic, murdered officer PC Keith Palmer. in another lifetime, a bottle of whisky and a loaded service revolver would have been a more honourable way out.