George Orwell

On 1st April 1942 Orwell quotes a passage from his book about the >Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia:

“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting…It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.” [1]

Others have written in that vein, but it seems to me that few but Orwell could or would have added the following sentence:

Here I am in the BC, less than 5 years after writing that. I suppose sooner or later we all write our own epitaphs.