At precisely eleven o'clock this morning we will be standing at the local cenotaph - traditionally in the wind and the rain. And for once no-one will complain openly about being cold and wet, remembering stories about the incredible hardships suffered by soldiers of both sides in the trenches - stories which are by now as much a part of our national consciousness as the Iliad was to the ancient Greeks, and equally remoteSo remote in fact, that they can be the subject of comedy - although the final scene of Blackadder Goes Forth (seen below) is no less poignant for that.By a strange coincidence, I share the same surname, and the same address, as the first young man to have his pathetically brief details inscribed on the memorial on the village green. I will remember him, even though I know nothing about him. Primarily of course, we will feel deep sorrow for the fallen; sympathy for their families, wives and sweethearts; regret for lives unlived. But we should feel anger too at the intransigency of politicians who continue to send young men to their deaths, and to kill others whose lives are similarly no longer their own.
