>>I've visited a few military cemeteries in France. Its a sobering experience looking at the ages of a lot of the dead. They where just children.
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>The one that really gets me is The Somme. My understanding is Britain had almost 60,000 casualties the first day - including 20,000 dead. It really defies imagination. I know in the eating hall at Oxford there is a memorial to the class of 1914 - I believe they lost something like 80% of their number in the Great War. Whatever the shortcomings of the British upper class, they did not hide when the war came.

Yale has a war memorial inside a building that houses a dining hall and an auditorium. We were there for a concert (that Nathaniel was conducting) recently and waiting to go in, I was looking at the names and dates. Every war back to the Revolution, though they haven't updated since Vietnam. I found myself really troubled by the loss of so much potential.

Tamar