Our politicians ask us to imagine that our ‘fallen’ soldiers ‘sacrificed’ themselves for a higher cause. For many young men sent to the first world war, there was no happy, patriotic ending

This year, yet again, the keepers of our national myths will tell us that the soldiers of the “Great War” have passed from life into our collective memory.

Some of us knew a first world war soldier. But, a century after the war began, for most of us who’ll stop today to mark a minute’s silence for Remembrance Day, the soldiers of the first world war long ago passed into – or always have been part of – our imaginations rather than our memories.

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