French mag spotlights war veteran's peace message
Shropshire Normandy veteran George Evans has gone international with his anti-war message after being featured over several pages by a French magazine.
George, who has just turned 96, was interviewed by Guerres & Histoire ("Wars and History") about his experiences and how they turned him into a pacifist.
He landed soon after D-Day, fought through France, and was on the spot to see the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
"A magazine like this is obviously made for people who think that war is exciting, heroic, marvellous, and fantastic – and they are fantasies, as real war isn't heroic at all. I thought it was kind of them to let me get a pacifist message over," said George, from Wellington.
The magazine seems to have sought him out having learned of the 2015 controversy when he was dropped from reading the traditional poem remembering the fallen at Wellington's Remembrance events, after reading a poem with an anti-war message the previous year.
His own French is a bit rusty – he passed his matriculation for mature students in French back in 1947, and only then thanks to a kind lecturer – so a friend has read the article in English to him. It is carried in the June issue of the magazine and is headlined, in French, "How The War Turned Me Into A Militant Pacifist."
"What I hope to do is get over the message that war is stupid. I landed on D-Day plus 20. All the kids think that D-Day was one day. It was described as the longest day. By God it was the longest day. It took 11 months.
"I wanted to get a bit of realism into the national consciousness and turf out some of the heroism. They say they gave their lives. They didn't. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and a shell hit them, or something like that.
"I get a bit hot under the collar about people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I saw it for myself. I have seen inside Bergen-Belsen. I have seen people suffering, from cholera mostly, I think, who had been sent there to be killed.
"I don't want another war to start. There are people I could name who are the sort of politicians who start wars, and some of them are British. Boris is a good example.
"When he was foreign minister he insulted the heads of state of most of the countries he dealt with. That's the way to start wars."
