Many Great War survivors remained silent for decades, their secret stories emerging only towards the end of their lives The matron of the nursing home looked suspicious. It was January 1978. We were standing with our newborn son, half-frozen in a windy municipal cemetery in west London, at the grave of William Morgan, recently deceased.“What will happen to his possessions?” I had asked her. She said he had virtually nothing: what did I mean? And I told her about the telegram.William Morgan, a private soldier in the then Welsh Regiment, was posted as missing presumed dead in action at l’Epinette during the Battle of Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915 and a telegram despatched to his parents. But he was far from dead. He had come round after one of the more futile battles of the