For me it began in 1994, watching the D-Day memorial events and
realising that that year would also see the 80th anniversary of the
beginning of WWI. So I started reading the very excellent books of
Lyn MacDonald. Not great as military history, it helps to have some
idea of what was going on at the time, but unequalled (in my
admittedly limited experience) in terms of what the men on the
ground experienced. She has had an obsession with tracking down as
many WWI veterans as possible and getting their experiences
recorded.
I don't have the guide book to hand to check the fact, but when I
visited Ypres I seem to remember that the Menin gate is a memorial
for all of the British missing of WWI (or, at least, for those
missing in Western Europe). Or it would be, if there was room for
all the names, the Thiepval memorial is the overflow. And I
remember the quite profound chill that ran through me when I saw
that one of the names was 'John Cullen' (my name, my father's name
and his father's name).
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