In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. (Dr John McCrae) I went on a short break to Bruges for my first ever trip to Belgium for the Bank Holiday weekend.

On my trip my wife had arranged for me to go on a Battlefields tour as she know that I was interested in the Great War and that also my Great Granddad fought in the war.

I found it very moving and was bear to tears at seeing the rows upon rows of war graves and knowing that most when they died were very young lads and that so many died for our freedom and democracy and that the main reason that Britain got involved in the war was to help defend Belgium from being overtaken by and expanding Germany who was looking to also to take over France and as many new territories as she could muster in the process.

Millions of people died as a result of this war and WW2 (where even more people were killed).

It saddens me that most people can’t be bothered to vote in both local and national elections, that they don’t know about or care that entire generations before them were wiped out to defend this country and the freedoms of others.

Pte Valentine Strudwick was aged only 15 when he was killed in Flanders, school children from the UK go and visit his grave.

We all go on about how much that we want to come out of the EU but we don’t stop to remember why the EU and before that the League of Nations was set up in the first place.

I think that my mind is moving away from wanting the right to come out of the EU, by all means hold a referendum but I think that I would personally vote to stay in.

My Great Grandfather never spoke of the war when he came back to Civvy Street. After I researched into his battalion and where they fought and looked for myself as to one of the many battlefields that he fought in, as I looked at the list of the dead and missing with regards to his regiment, etc – I can see only too well why he never spoke about what he went through.

He fought on the same fields that I went on in the 3rd battle of Ypres in Belgium.

He was brave (he was awarded the Military Medal – which was for bravery in the field, whereby Officers would be awarded the Military Cross instead) and he was bloody lucky to survive the war and millions of our lads (and the lads from the opposing sides) did not make it.

British, German, Turks, Australians, Canadians, and from all over the world on both sides didn’t choose to start this war, they did what they were ordered to do from their Country. It was political leaders and heads of states which started this war. Tensions from previous wars, imperial expansion, bad blood and even bad political management that then led onto the Second Ward war afterwards..

It was men that were to blame but it was also the common man that paid the price and his family.

Let us not forget.