At this time , like many, I remember all the brave souls who sacrificed their lives for ours, and those who have survived, and who with great dignity have silently carried the horrors they endured physically and mentally while serving their country .

Families all have their own stories shared through the generations . My Great Grandfather Tom was a gentle man , working as a scenic artist in theatres, studying under Opie in Plymouth at the time he got his papers and was called up during WW1 . He was living with his wife and children in what is now the Museum at the Barbican in Plymouth. Amazingly , inside not much has changed , this we discovered when I took my grandmother back there years ago, for her to share her childhood memories of that old building with its ancient sloping oak floorboards . She told me the family had shared the house with another, who occupied the ground floor . Up the wooden staircase Tom Perring had his artists easel by the window where my grandmother would watch the boys in the yard below playing football, with what was commonly used in those days, a blown up pigs bladder. Their family life came to an abrupt and painful end and their world changed forever as Thomas Perring lost his life on the front line as a stretcher bearer, November 13th 1917. His remains were never found, he is though remembered on the war memorials where he lived, and by his family that love him .

We will remember them .