Every old church has them, the memorials to the young men who left their parish to fight in the Great War, and who never returned. My church has several: there’s Edward Wilfred Hussey, who was killed in action at Ypres, August 1917, aged 22 years, “for many years an altar server at this church”. And there’s Philip James Hussey, also of the Queen’s Westminster Rifles, a cousin, I suppose, of Edward, who died in September 1916 of wounds sustained in action. He too was aged 22; he too was for many years an altar server at the church. They served at the altar together; they fought together; they died within months of each other; and they’re commemorated on stone plaques in the church where, in a decent world, they would have been married, not mourned.