We met, this morning, in the country park in the village beside the silhouette of the silent soldier. The reverend read prayers and our friend, Bernie, movingly recited the poem “In Flanders Fields”, then the last post was played by the single bugler. Two wreaths were laid and we observed two minutes silence.

At home I looked at the photograph of my maternal grandfather, Charles Cohen, who volunteered at the age of 17.

He trained and was kitted out but, thank heavens, The Armistice was declared before he was sent to fight. My paternal grandfather, Sam Cohen, was older and did serve and fight and survived the terrible Battle of the Somme.

He returned a harder man, no more a boy, married and fathered his only child 9 years later. He rarely talked of his experiences but told my brother of sleeping in the trenches with rats running over him. He told me that he used his command of the Yiddish language to translate for the German soldiers that they took prisoner. My paternal grandmother, Sam’s wife, had met a boy during the Great War, years before she met and married Sam. This young New Zealand lad was on his way to fight in France, from where he sent her embroidered postcards.

He was killed in a foreign land, never to return, and so very far from his home. We remember all who served and we mourn the loss of life in that war and all wars.