How sad for your Uncle. He was so young. We need to hear these stories of WW1. I know more about the 2nd world war as my mother was a FANY in Africa where I was born. My Father was always away fighting and we came back to England on a convoy ship. Ours was so small we lost the rest of the fleet! We arrived in Liverpool & had no idea whether my grandmother was still alive or where she was. We made it to West Wittering, got off the bus & asked where mrs Rowe lived.
By chance it was opposite the bus stop. I did not see my Father until I was 4 years old. He had a tickly moustache & was like a stranger to me. Later he went off again to fight in other wars including Korea.

Are the ceremonies we hold to commemorate our war dead proper and appropriate.? Should we not do more to recognise their sacrifice? In years to come memories will fade and I think we should have more active and participative ways to show our respect - such as - cleaning and putting flowers around war memorials as citizens , not leaving it to the council !- and not just once a year.

We should teach children as part of the curriculum as we become more ethnically diverse of the historical events and their impact. The Armed Forces should visit schools and review what happened and why and all schools should arrange trips to war sites to understand events and appreciate adversity and loss.

What do you think ?

I agree with you wholeheartedly Petebut. My late father was killed over Holland a month before I was born, and over the past three years I have been in touch with a Dutch archivist who has been wonderful in helping to put together the story of this and another aircraft lost in this particular area. The thing that moves me most though is the way these graves are tended and cared for by the local population which is nothing short of amazing. The local school children are all included in this to this day, and some of them are assigned to a certain grave for a given period of time which is their particular responsibility, then another group take over, and so on. Only this week I had an email from the corporation of this town, telling me of a service they hold each year, and the flowers they put on these graves with a special message of gratitude. Isn't that quite wonderful and very very humbling. I can't help but think, that if it was Dutch airmen lying in their graves in an English Graveyard, would we afford them the same respect and care? Sadly I think probably not, but maybe I'm being too cynical!!!

Hello Jeremy,

My question is, do you think wars should be celebrated or mourned, and how can we get the horrors of war over to future generations whilst honouring the war dead and maimed.

I have enjoyed your WW1 programmes, particularly the descriptions of some of the minor but intensely personal events. My grandfather was a first war soldier and my father a professional soldier for most of his life, in consequence of which I was brought up in a military environment. The glorification of war was not a part of that life, and whilst I like and respect tradition, I am concerned that ceremonies like the Trooping of the Colour may be sending out the wrong messages these days when the horrors of war are still so very evident.

I have just watched a programme about Ivor Gurney, who for the last years of his life after WW1 never wrote any more poetry and ended up in a mental asylum.
My mother used to tell us about her uncle, who was in the Hull Pals. He joined with lots of friends from his place of work. They were in the infantry, digging trenches. When a shell landed in No Man's Land, they used to dig until they reached the shell hole, to advance the front line. One day a shell came over, so they dug. The next shell landed in the same hole and killed everyone apart from her uncle.
Her mother used to say he was such a happy lad before he went off to war. When he came back he never laughed or sang again.
You can understand why people used to be so reluctant to talk about the war. Even our fathers were reluctant to talk about the second world war.
Now they are dying off, and wars since seem to be more distant. How do we get children to realise war is not a game to be played on Xbox or Wii?

My grandfather (born in 1892 and named Seymour Patterson) in civilian life was a wheelwright, joiner and undertaker. I have a photo of him in his uniform with a flash on the shoulder which possibly reads 'Fleet Air Arm'. I am led to believe that he helped build the first wooden planes and that those who built them had to go up on the maiden flight. I suppose this was to make sure they built them correctly !
Will this story have any truth in it and how could I find out more about his service life ? I have had a tentative look on the internet but have had no luck as his name does not seem to be there.
He came through the war unscathed as far as I know.

Tiggy, I have seen a photo of engineers repairing planes in the first world war. They are all women! Never heard of this before. It would be interesting to find out what happened to them after the war.

Sorry, but an obscure question Jeremy.
Do you know that Craig Lockhart (associated with Sassoon and Wilfred Owen) and most recently owned by Napier University, may be 'lost to the nation'?
I have been told that there are plans to sell/develop the site. Could you investigate this and do everything in your power to save this gem? At a time when we are remembering WW1, it must also be important to rmember the pioneering work carried out there, I believe it was where shell-shocked soldiers were first treated for the condition.
Thankyou, OGM.

friendsofcraighouse.com/2012/05/05/craighouse-napier-have-serious-questions-to-answer-on-sale-support-of-proposals-and-financial-interest/

Thanks Elegran my computer won't let me access this so I'll 'google' instead.

Jeremy, it seems to me that those who served and died during the two world wars engender a simple response of gratitude for their sacrifice and yet the response to those who have died in more recent conflicts do not. The causes of conflicts, and individual incidents within such conflicts, are now rightly subject to far greater scrutiny than in the past and consequently those who currently serve are regarded in some way as being, for want of a better word, 'tainted', by people's perception of recent conflicts. Do you have a view on this?
I speak as someone who opposed recent conflicts and yet supported a close family member in the military who lost his life to an IED in Afghanistan.

Jeremy, your great uncles story is a sad one, like so many others of that era.My grandfather enlisted at age 18 just as war broke out in 1914. he was from Bradford in West Yorkshire, not a million miles from Shipley [where in later life he was a great walker and he and his rambling club went all over Shipley Glen and liked to end their rambles at a famous pub called Dick Hudsons.]He spent until 1919 in Germany, as he volunteered to stay on for a year there during the occupation[he liked Germany and never held the war against the German people.]He took to pipe smoking while he was there, and smoked one right up to his death in 1975, which my grandma did blame on the German people[the pipe smoking, not his death.] Apart from telling me that he liked the town he was billeted in during the occupation he would never say anything about the war, and when I once asked, when I was about 15, he just looked at me mildly [he was a very mild man] and said 'it was horrible, love.' Somehow that told me that it really was unspeakable.When you are young you never think about these things, but now I can see how very afwul it must have been for my Grandparents when war broke out in 1939, what did their son , my father, do? Joined up the second he was 18 years old.He wanted to do the same as his Father had, but luckily, he came back too, and he would never talk about it either.

I write about my Grampy, whose memory I hold very dear. He was a regular soldier at the start of WWI and whilst serving in France randomly met his father one day serving as a stretcher bearer (having served as a soldier himself in Ireland prior to the war).

Of Grampy's four years out there we know very little; he learnt to speak French and would help with my homework but when it came to the time that we learnt of that war in history lessons, he simply refused to discuss his part.

In the thirties with three small children, no work and recovering from pneumonia his friend encouraged him to join the RAF reserve - easy money, just a bit of training and summer camp. So when 1939 came he was quickly mobilised and served throughout that war too as a Sergeant on an air base - the "Uncle" figure, I would imagine, one of whose tasks it was to tidy the personal effects of fallen pilots and write letters to families. In a brief diary entry at the time he wrote of sadness "which would melt a heart of stone".

After the war he worked happily as a bus conductor and later, defying his years, as a concierge at Somerset House, then an assistant to a local solicitor until well into his seventies. I remember him as always upright and cheerful, perfectly clean-shaven and soapy-smelling mingled with his beloved pipe smoke. Brave and uncomplaining to the end, whatever he came up against. I am glad he saw our eldest son and just every now and then I fancy that I glimpse his smile or the set of his firm jaw in the faces of our children and grandchildren.

How much we owe to our fathers and forefathers, indeed......

Hi Jeremy! My family came through both wars relatively unscathed, thankfully but, do you think we should be teaching our children (or in my case grandchildren!) about the bravery of individuals in war or should we be teaching them about the vanity of leaders who start wars? Are the two things compatible?

A lot of our family stories of WW1 have turned out to be myths. For example my husband's maternal grandfather had told his family (he married his 2nd wife in 1919) that he was in the cavalry in Colchester in WW1. They were from Rochdale but we now live in Colchester. My research has found that he was a groom in the stables at Colchester cavalry barracks for a few months until he was invalided out of the army because he had an adverse reaction to the vaccinations he was given.

Why did men feel the need to embroider the truth or not to correct misconceptions?

Also, at a recent family funeral, his grandchildren all told me that he was at least 6ft tall. His WW1 records have him at 5ft 8. Were the records accurate or is this another family exaggeration?

Why did it take Greece until July 1917 to decide which side they were on?

In view of the carnage of WW1 why was the Kaiser allowed to live out his days unpunished in Holland?

Grandson of Queen Vic, rubysong, so was a bit of influence applied by the King? And why Holland? A bit close to the place where the Germans behaved very badly early in the war. Wasn't it Namur? Interesting to hear Jeremy's opinion.

Italy lost around 3% of its population during World War 1, and the country was left impoverished and weak, with high inflation and unemployment, after fighting a disastrous campaign to the South of the Western Front. Between 1915 and 1917, Italian troops only managed to get 10 miles into Austrian territory, and they then had to retreat from the battle of Caporetto, having had to fight the whole Austrian Army and 7 divisions of German troops, and losing 300,000 men. Being on the winning side they at least expected to be given the large areas of territory in the Adriatic promised to them by Britain when they were persuaded to join the war. Instead they were all but ignored and humiliated by Britain, France and the USA at Versailles afterwards and gained virtually nothing. Why would you say this was? Was it simply because they were known to have favoured the “other side” at the start of hostilities? And how far would you say the Italian WW1 experience aided the rise of Mussolini?

Pittcity, I have my father's records for WW11. He was only 6 foot when he joined, but always 6 foot 2.5" after he came out. Not the same difference, but still quite a bit. He was ten stone, with a chest measurement of 32" when he went in. I never knew him to be less than 12 stone, and chest minimum 38", so he grew a bit with all that army food.

Hi Jeremy. Do you have an opinion on how WW1 should be taught in schools? At the moment all kids take from WW1 is the Somme and trenches. Do you think it should be more diverse and they should be taught more about other countries?

I've just come over from Twitter so apologies if I'm not doing this right . . .

Is there someone you haven't yet interviewed who you'd really like to grill ?

My mum inherited a silver locket from her grandmother with a picture of her grandfather inside it.

Over time, the latch got worn and eventually the contents came loose. Behind the photo was a silver sixpence carefully filed down to fit into the locket and behind that was another photo of a young man. The back of the photo just read "Thomas Brown. "Missing" 1914-1918".

We have no idea who he was and what his relationship was to her. We don't know why she kept it hidden and no one has any memory of her mentioning him. She was already married by the time of WW1 so maybe an old sweetheart or a school friend, or the brother of a friend that she had a crush on - who knows?

It reminds me a bit of the lyrics of "Green Fields of France" by Eric Bogle, and I always think of him on Armistice Day.

Loved your interview with Russell Brand that went viral

Do you think he speaks complete nonsense or is there some meaning to his words? I think he's verbose just for show.