The lines are being blurred even more as the years pass as to what November 11th actually represents, but it should never be forgotten that it was end of the terrible conflict that was World War I.
For years the ArtPix clan had always thought that we were one of the rare, lucky families that hadn't lost anyone in that conflict.
Although I never knew them, both my Grandads served in WW1, and thankfully survived, and there were no family stories or legends concerning anyone lost.
However, since my sister started delving in the family history a few years ago, we are now starting to find out we weren't so lucky, having already found some casualties.
Only a couple of weeks ago she discovered, unknown to anyone in the family, of another one.
A distant cousin of mine, called Alfred Clark.
Although born and bred in London, like pretty much all my family, he served in the West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales Own), and died of wounds received on the Yser Canal on 27th January 1916. Age 21. He's buried at the Étaples Military Cemetery in France.
Yser is just north of the infamous town of Ypres in Belgium, and was the scene of a big battle in October 1914.
It would be possible to trace what he was doing, and where precisely where he was, in the Regimental diaries of the time.
The year, and the fact he was 21 when he died, meant he almost certainly volunteered in 1914 to fight. Conscription didn't kick in until 1916.
As he had been wounded, I presume he went down the line via the casualty clearing stations, eventually ending up at the vast British Army camp at Étaples in preparation for being shipped back to Blighty.
Sadly he never made it, and was buried at the huge cemetery there which has 11,517 graves.
The WW1 poet Wilfred Owen wrote an incredible few lines about the base camp at Étaples, known to the soldiers as 'Eat Apples'. Every British soldier would have passed through there on their way to the front line, and the sounds of the distant guns was just audible.
He noted the look on people's faces. He said that no painter could ever paint, or any actor could ever portray the expression that the soldiers who were heading to the front had.
A fascinating quote.
LEST WE FORGET
