War

War is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations...a period of such armed conflict". 

John Peel was born on 30 August 1939, a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War but admitted to not remembering much about it, beyond being carried out to an air-raid shelter and seeing a German plane fly low over his garden. His father served in North Africa: as a result, JP saw little of him for the first six years of his life.

National Service
Peel made an early application to be called up and entered the Royal Artillery: not through choice but because, as he explained in Margrave, he was only submitting to the inevitable (only those born after the outbreak of war were exempt). After initial training on Salisbury Plain, he obtained a compassionate posting to Ty Croes Camp on Anglesey (due to his parents' divorce and wanting to be close to where his brother Alan was posted). Peel later claimed that he learned little during his time in service and never saw military action.

Pacifism
JP embraced hippie ideals during his time on the Perfumed Garden, meaning that he joined in protests (including, ironically, a violent anti-Vietnam War demo in Grosvenor Square, London on March 17, 1968) and promoted pacifism along the lines of the slogan "make love, not war." During the first Iraq war of 1991, he had to endure his programme being interrupted every half an hour for news bulletins: typically, he noted that this was "entirely deserved".


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