“Remembrance Day has a series of meanings for me. My grandfather fought in the Second World War. He volunteered in 1942 a soon as he was 18. He made it as far as D-Day where he got shot in Northern France. Fortunately, he was only wounded. My grandfather was a lovely man, full of spirit and a real laugh, lovely to kids and a generally happy man. Except when you mentioned the war. Then he would go silent and his face set like thunder and we all quietly moved out of the way. That was all I ever got out of him until he passed away.

“In another memorial, my great great paternal grandfather was one of four brothers who all fought in World War 1. They weren't kids, having all been born in the 1880s. They all served in the 1st London Rifles. Only one of them came home. We know where two of the others were buried, but one is just listed as killed in action, grave unknown. So many were buried in heaps of mud, drowned in shell holes filling with muddy water and shell debris. The man had passed away before I ever had a chance to know him, but my grandad said he ran a butcher's shop in Birmingham until he died peacefully of old age. 

“I try to remember them all every year in my own way but I worry I will be the last in my family to do so then they will just be names in a pdf somewhere in an archive. I suppose that’s the way history works, but I don't have to like it.”