Pilots and war

The German pilot who shot down French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1944, said that he is sorry he did it. He said that he never would have fired if he had known who was piloting the other plane.

See : http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=601PD0C7.

That is a very nice, if very late, and somewhat gratuitous feeling indeed.

Real guilt lies with those who start wars for the greater glory of their country or for their self-aggrandisement. And every soldier killed was a Saint-Exupéry for someone else.

I first wrote "guilt lies with the criminals who start wars ... " but then I realised once more that, with the exception of super-criminal mass murderers and thugs like Hitler, Stalin etc, the defining factor is not ethics - not who was right and who was wrong - but simply who came out the winner, because history is written by the winners.