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12 December 2015updated 14 Dec 2015 1:09pm

Our brothers’ keepers: Harry Leslie Smith visits the “Jungle” in Calais

As a young British soldier in 1945, Harry Leslie Smith witnessed Europe’s last great refugee crisis. Now, aged 92, he meets a new generation of refugees.

By Harry Leslie Smith

In early November, I took the Eurostar from St Pancras in London to Calais. We left at dawn and a pallid fog hung across the English sky like white bedding sheets strung across row house laundry lines.

The other passengers in my carriage wore expensive suits and looked preoccupied with sales quotas, market shares and the prospect of their annual Christmas bonuses. I was heading to the refugee camp known as the “Jungle” by its residents, because it lacks sanitation, health care or adequate living quarters. I felt sad and angry about the way we ignore suffering through distraction.

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