I never knew my Grandfather, yet I love him as though I had known him all my life. He married in 1913 and my Mother was only a few months old when he, a regular soldier, was ****ed early in the war. He has no grave but I was privelaged to have been able to visit Ploegsteert to see his on the Memorial there. It was difficult to imagine when visiting this peaceful countryside 100 years on what it must have been like for those men. Even though many of them had been in the army for some time nothing could have prepared them for the horrors they had to face.

Margaret Hayward