'What did you do in the war Grandad?'
As the numbers of those who fought in the two world wars diminish, there is a danger that the answer to this question may not be forthcoming. It is all too easy, especially for young people who may not have a direct connection to the history of those events, to become bogged down in textbook statistics and forget that the names remembered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on headstones and memorials, or the faces that stare out at us from sepia-tinted photographs, relate to real people, called upon to do a difficult and sometimes terrible job.
'...never forget the price paid for the freedoms we enjoy...'
Gaining an insight into the lives of those who served and died in the two world wars, or those who survived, is a tangible way to ensure that we never forget the price paid for the freedoms we enjoy. But how does one go about such research in what can be, no pun intended, an information minefield?
Published: 2002-03-01
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