Clinton Rogers: Have we forgotten the lessons of history?

I met Harry Patch, 'The Last Tommy,' the sole survivor of the horrors of the World War One battlefields, several times.

He never saw himself as brave, just lucky to have lived 111 years when many of his friends never made it out of their teens.

And every time we spoke, he insisted that any piece I wrote should acknowledge the bravery and sacrifice of young men on both sides of the trenches.

"The war was futile for both countries," he would say.

And reflecting on the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, the battle that became synonymous with "mud, blood and futility," he would say:

"So many lives lost for a few hundred yards of land."

He thought the world would have learned from that.

But it didn’t. It never has.

World War Two veterans know that only too well.

And last week the world paused for a while, on VE Day, to honour their bravery and commemorate the loss of so many of their colleagues.

It was an honour, as a deputy lieutenant in Somerset, to play a small part in those events, saying a few words at a beacon lighting in Chard.

The mood was rightly reflective, sombre, respectful.

The message clear: Lest we forget.

Yet here we are now, 80 years on, with the world as unstable as I can remember it for many a year.

What would Harry Patch think?

What would my dear departed friend Herbie Fussell make of it all?

A former sergeant in the Parachute Regiment, who dropped into Normandy the day before the D-Day landings, he too spoke of the futility of war.

I will never forget walking with him to the grave of his fallen friend, the man he cradled in his arms as he took his last breath.

"I don’t know … so many lives," he would say.

"So many lives.

"Lest we forget."

Or have we forgotten – again?

I try not to get too depressed about it all.

I prefer to remember the nights drinking with D-Day veterans in the bars of Normandy.

You never buy a drink in a French bar when you were with war veterans in their berets with medals emblazoned across their chests.

Of course, it could lead to you staggering home so late you all get locked out of your French hotel … but that’s another story.

At least we all lived to tell it!