Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

This is a letter that was written by Jim Macgregor, one of the authors of Hidden History, which is about the true causes of World War 1.  It was sent not to me, but to Stephen Requa, and Steve shared it with me. With permission, I am posting it here because I found it to be very moving.

Steve,

It's beginning to sink in why you have been so confident and
optimistic in your emails to me, while I've been all doom and gloom re
the possibility of ever successfully squaring up to this terrible evil. You give
me hope and courage and I thank you for that.

My interest in geopolitics and the causes of global conflict kicked off at a young
age. My grandfather John Macgregor (Cameron Highlanders) was wounded
in 1916 and my father James (Royal Navy) in 1943. Dad ended up at
Erskine Hospital for war wounded on the banks of the Clyde near
Glasgow. He and mum were allocated one of the nice little sheltered
cottages the hospital built on the beautiful grounds there, and I came
along with my brother and two sisters. As a boy I was always in the
hospital wards running errands for the badly wounded men there from
both world wars - even one or two from the Boer War - and ever asking
them questions about the battles they had fought in. Very few were
willing to talk about it. To a man they detested war and all that it
meant.

 

The hospital was run on charitable donations from the people of
Scotland and I spent many hours as a medical student and a young doctor
helping out. That hospital was my motivation to become a doctor. I felt I owed them (Erskine Hospital) so much for the loving, tender care they bestowed upon my damaged father. 

 

I vividly recall the day I asked an old wounded Somme
veteran, Jimmy Craig, what the First World War was all about. He told
me he hadn't the foggiest notion. He had been cared for in that hospital for
about fifty years with only one stump of an arm remaining and no legs. And, he
had no idea why the ghastly war had happened. I very presumptuously informed
him that one day I would find out and let him know. He died many years
before I came to understand the terrible truth.  Quite apart from the
20 million who died, there were many times that number whose lives had
been horribly blighted like Jimmy Craig's.  Blighted by the evil scum that
you and I have come to recognize as being responsible for that insane war. 

Scum who died peacefully in their beds in advanced old age after destroying 

the lives of so many decent young men. I detest them with a passion together with
their present day descendants who still send young men to war. I will
do all I possibly can to help bring them down. Jim Macgregor