A salute to the brave

Joe Biden is of course "outraged" at the death of seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza the other day, but my reaction is pride and admiration for the brave foreigners who put their lives on the line in a good cause. They include a Pole, an Australian, and a Canadian working for WCK, and three British military veterans who hired out as security guards. (The seventh victim was their Palestinian driver.)

A tip of the virtual hat to them! I especially liked this image of Jim Henderson, 33 years old, a veteran of the Royal Marines. (The photographer is the woman shown on the left in the mirror.) The thugs of the Wagner Group in Ukraine and Africa, and the American contractors who went off the rails in Iraq, have given the profession a bad name, but military veterans doing security work are mostly good-hearted people helping others at the risk of their own lives, as Jim Henderson, John Chapman, and James Kirby have demonstrated. They worked for a British firm, Solace Global, whose motto is "Leave nothing to chance." But chance, alas, always gets its vote.