Recently I found a fairly distant cousin's military records for World War 1. He enlisted at the age of seventeen, before he was called up. There is a note on his record that he will never make a capable soldier. Nevertheless he was sent to the front the following April, and was killed a few weeks later.
Isn't it sad. How many teenagers and young men were killed as a result of a family squabble among the royal families of Europe? Our armies were lead by the senile and the incompetent, who played soldiers with these young men.
Today is St George's day, but I can't say it fills me with any sense of pride. I'm not proud of my nationality in the first place, nor am I ashamed of it. It is something I have absolutely no control over.
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