The 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War has been well covered on television with some remarkable stories of courage told.
Particularly interesting were the programmes following well-known faces as they traced family members who fought in France or on the home front.
One remarked that her family's story could have been any family's story, for all of us have someone wh
o went through this "war to end all wars'.
One film I found quite shocking, however, followed two youths, aged 14 and 17, who said they knew nothing about the
First World War, had no idea their own great grandfather fought in the trenches and didn't have a clue why we wore poppies or what they symbolised.
How can such ignorance persist when the subject is part of our National Curriculum and so many schools now run trips to the battlefields.
As a child, I visited the cemeteries of northern France with my parents, who were probably ahead of their time in feeling their children should appreciate the scale of destruction which secured our freedom.
In turn, I took my own children, at quite a young age, to the memorial at
Thiepval, which commemorates the 72,000 missing soldiers of the Somme who have no other known grave.
The rows of white headstones and the long lists of names engraved on marble that reaches into the sky tell the story far better than any text book ever could.
It's a trip we should all make at some time in our lives.
The full article contains 261 words and appears in Diss Express newspaper.
