I Know That The Hopes Of This

I Was Astonished To Find That The Positions My Grandfather Had Defended Were Now Overgrown And Entangled With Trees And Thorns. I Suppose I Had Developed A Sense Of Reverence For The Locations He Described In His Memoirs And Letters - The Forts And The High Emplacements. I Had Expected Them To Have Been Preserved In Some Way.

I Think All Of Us Are Intrigued To Imagine What We As Individuals Would Become, If We Were Ever Tested As Hard As That Golden Generation Was.

Would We Be The Heroes Or The Cowards Of The Piece? Would We Follow Orders Or Stick To Our Principles, If Those Two Things Ever Conflicted? Would We Be The Brave Ones Who Still Found The Capacity For Love - And For Laughter - Even While We Were Terrified?

There Was No Quick Grief For Andrew Because He Had Been So Slowly Lost. First From My Heart, Then From My Mind, And Only Finally From My Life.

Yet War Doesn't End With Armistice, It Only Ends With Forgiveness And Reconciliation.