Lest We Forget

 I have two loves of genres that I write – Victorian and WWI. My regular readers will know that I have set many books in the Victorian era, but my WWI era novels are also close to my heart simply because of my fascination with the Great War.

Every Remembrance Day, I pause to give silent thanks to those who endured those war years, both on the battlefields and those at home. Their sacrifices allow us to have the freedom we do today.

Many years of research has given me an understanding of the hardships which that WWI generation went through. The first major war to touch so many lives in modern history.

While I will never fully appreciate the horrors those brave men and women suffered, I hope I have honoured them in some way in my stories. I wanted to use that era in my stories to represent not only the hardships and challenges but to show that people grew in character and strength because of what they had to face.

The world changed after the Great War. It was a time our ancestors lived, a time that should never be forgotten as the years dim memories.

We should all, if we can, visit the battlefields where so many young men gave up their lives, their futures, for us. It is moving, humbling and so very special to walk in their footsteps, to pay tribute to their lost youth.

November 11th 1918 the war ended, but we must never stop remembering and respecting all those sacrifices.

Lest We Forget.

Perhaps, by Vera Brittain

(Dedicated to her fiancé Roland Aubrey Leighton, who was killed at the age of 20 by a sniper in 1915, four months after she had accepted his marriage proposal)

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,

And I shall see that still the skies are blue,

And feel once more I do not live in vain,

Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet,

Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,

And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,

Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,

And crimson roses once again be fair,

And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,

Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain,

To see the passing of the dying year,

And listen to Christmas songs again,

Although You cannot hear.

But though kind Time may many joys renew,

There is one greatest joy I shall not know again,

Because my heart for loss of You

Was broken, long ago.