WWII Vet’s Epic Takedown: ‘Wear a Damn Poppy, You Bastard!’

Poppy Vet
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
James Delingpole

For some years now, one of the worst things on Twitter has been @harryslaststand. It purports to be the account of a 93-year old World War II veteran called Harry Leslie Smith – author of a successful autobiography about his life in the Great Depression and the war called Harry’s Last Stand – who comments on the day’s news from a bitter, angry, hard-left-wing perspective.

Here’s a taste:

 Harry doesn’t just hate Donald Trump. He also hates patriotism, UKIP, Brexit, austerity, free markets, low taxes, lying journalists, the NRA, red poppies on Remembrance Sunday, the royal family, you name it…

Earlier this year, Guido revealed that the account is probably maintained for Harry by his son, his publisher, and members of the Labour party – it being somewhat implausible that a 93-year-old man, however fired with righteous rage, would have the energy and technical prowess to respond instantly to the news on Twitter with tetchy Socialist soundbites.

But no one has ever dared confront Harry directly because his age and his war service (with the Royal Air Force) have provided him his Get Out Of Jail Free.

At least not until now.

Today, Harry Leslie Smith has finally met his match in the form of another nonagenarian World War II veteran Larry Martin.

In an article for Country Squire magazine, Martin doesn’t mince his words.

I think you’re a hate-filled, wizened old trot, Harry. Personally, I’d have detested fighting alongside you as you’ve become, as you’re the type of whining egit who gets in people’s ears and tries to break down the Great British spirit. Wear a damn poppy, you bastard. Remember our fallen comrades you supercilious buffoon.

Martin, it’s clear, saw a lot more serious action in the war than Smith (who served in the RAF but not, it would seem, at the sharp end).

You see I’ll be 92 this year and, like Harry, I served in the Second World War. Amongst other engagements I was involved in the successful assault on Gold beach in Normandy on D-Day and from what I’ve read of Harry’s exploits, the efforts of my comrades and I that day were certainly a match in obligatory courageousness.

And he has no time for the way Smith uses his age and war record to pontificate on behalf of his generation.

I know for a fact that those men I fought alongside, almost all of whom are now long dead and buried, would be ashamed by you thrusting your service in the face of younger generations as a holier-than-thou force field in some vain attempt to prevent them attacking your dim-witted notions. You DO NOT speak for your generation, Harry. Just that most of them are too knackered to stand on a soap-box or have passed. The social democratic institutions you are taking your “last stand” over (last stand? The war finished in September 1945, mate) most of us never wanted in the first place.

If Churchill had won in ’45 we’d have ended up with a supportable (yes, market-driven) healthcare system in time instead of the bloated, good-for-nothing mess we’ve got now. It’s because of socialist do-gooders such as yourself, who always end up bitter and spiteful snipers on the sidelines of our society, that over our lifetimes Britain has been held back so often. Your MPs have taken seats in poor places in Britain and those places are still relatively poor. Not noticed, Harry?

Your lot made a complete mess of the seventies and then returned to make a complete mess of the late noughties. Have you no shame? Look at what your lot have done to our then Allies: to Russia, to France. Look at the amount of lives lost to communism and socialism since we put on our uniforms to defeat fascism. And look today at the lives being lost in South America to your vicious, pernicious ideologies. I’ve read your books, your articles and some of your tweets and I see no difference between your thinking and that taken up by Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Nice men, Harry. Great company you keep now. How would they have gone down in the canteen with your comrades in the war?

Bliss.

You can read the whole glorious article here.

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