A day for The Great War. in Voices Windward

We choose the 5th of August as the day we mark ... Ignoring the lives already lost before then in The Great War ... Well, The Forgotten War as it was known for the first few years was heralded in with a few inches of press, and only after several years of trench warfare did they start to care.

Entire streets of boys we're encouraged with propaganda, patriotism and peer pressure to sign up, bundled together in the same brigade so the same grenade could end a street's future. The rest were conscripted and sent out to die for a pointless cause in a pointless war as monarchs played their games, unless of course you bought your way out or had academic value or just went on holiday for a while on family fortunes, even then maybe you'd fancy some glory and stand with the other sons of aristocrats at the back of the melee blowing whistles and sending cannon fodder into memory.

Now plutocrats and oligarchs bang their drums and salute the modern mercenary, hailing them as heroes and in-stowing us all with a sense of pride and honour in the occupation of foreign lands and the vainty of trumpets for our handful of "brave young men" as we quickly brush past the thousands of names of children from cultures we don't care to understand.

The bands will play, the pride will swell, aren't we oh so proud to be British?