A 100-year-old British World War II veteran lamented that the current state of the United Kingdom was not the one he and his comrades fought for in World War II in an interview on Friday.
Alec Penstone served an extensive career in the Royal Navy, having been aboard the HMS Campania during the D‑Day invasion. As people across the British Commonwealth don the poppy to commemorate soldiers who died since World War I this Remembrance Sunday, Penstone was asked on “Good Morning Britain” what the day means to him.
“My message is, I can see in my mind’s eye, rows and rows of white stones, of all the hundreds of my friends and everybody else, that gave their lives – for what?” he replied to the show’s hosts. “The country of today… No, I’m sorry, the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now.”
“What do you mean by that, though?” one host asked.
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D-Day veteran Alec Penstone attends the Royal British Legion Service of Remembrance commemorating the 79th anniversary of the D-Day landings at Bayeux Cemetery in Normandy, France, June 6, 2023. The service honored 22,442 servicemen and women from 38 countries who died under British command during D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. (Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)
“What we fought for was our freedom – we fought for it. Even now, it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it,” Penstone said.
“I’m so sorry you feel like that, because I want you to know that all the generations that have come since, including me and my children, are so grateful for your bravery,” another co-host declared. “It’s our job now, isn’t it, to make it the country that you fought for.”
Penstone thanked the hosts for their remarks.
The clip went viral across social media, with many commentators talking about the massive waves of immigration that have reshaped cities in the United Kingdom.
The UK has also been an international source of scrutiny for its hate speech laws, to the point people are encountering police on their doorstep for politically incorrect comments they made on social media. In August 2024, one police commissioner made headlines for threatening to extradite U.S. citizens to be tried in the UK for breaking their hate speech laws online.
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Amid cultural upheaval over illegal immigration and far-left censorship, a debate continues over whether those who died in World War II would recognize—or approve of—the nations they fought to defend. (MPI/Getty Images)
“The generations that benefitted from this man’s sacrifice, and so many others like him, have so squandered our inheritance that he no longer believes it was worth it,” Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet wrote on X. “That’s the gut punch the West deserves. We either will rise up and remember ourselves, or we will belong to the dust of history.”
Across the Atlantic, an American World War II veteran made similar comments in 2024. As Americans recognized the 80th anniversary of D-Day, veteran Ronald “Rondo” Scharfe reflected on his service in Normandy, France, as he spoke to Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.
“The real truth? I feel like a foreigner in my own country lots of times and I don’t like it. It makes my heart real heavy,” he said. “I just hope we can pull out of this, there’s too much Hollywood going on in Washington all the time — the important subjects they don’t cover. So I hope all the guys rally up and go back and straighten it all out.”
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Protesters wave Union Jack and St. George’s flags during the “Unite the Kingdom” rally against mass immigration in London, Sept. 13, 2025. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
