Britain bows to the old: war heroes, victims of the virus

The gratitude for the heroism of a time tempered by regrets for the many too many deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the last few weeks among the oldest. There are mixed feelings in the United Kingdom that marked the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory: VE Day, the day of veterans dedicated to the memory of the courage of the soldiers of the Second World War, to the memory of the fallen and to the homage of the last old surviving veterans .
    A tribute that was accompanied by pain for the thousands of deaths that occurred in nursing homes and remarried from the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Not a few of the heroes of the war on Nazifascism have fallen before the "invisible enemy", in the definition of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. A massacre that took place partly away from hospitals, and long neglected by the official count, which is only now emerging in all its dramatic vastness. As at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the London hospice that for 300 years has welcomed former soldiers of the army of His Majesty, 47 of whom have been veterans from the 1940-45 epic. Today the management of the facility has announced that nine of its 300 guests - recognizable by their flawless uniforms, red jackets on black trousers - have so far died from coronaviruses. And it is also in their memory that two minutes of silence were observed across the country - still immobilized by the lockdown measures -. In Westminster Abbey Johnson lit a symbolic candle, entrusting his message to an open letter. "We cannot give them the honors we would like with parades and celebrations on the street - wrote the conservative premier - But let us, as compatriots, be the first to offer our gratitude: you will never be forgotten". The same gratitude expressed by the Labor opposition leader, Keir Starmer, in an article on the pro-Tory Daily Telegraph. Not without an appeal that reproaches the Johnson government. "We must do more, everything we can, to protect the most vulnerable, many of whom have protected our nation - recalled Starmer quoting Winston Churchill - in its darkest hour."