Made an early start for Verdun arriving there at mid-day. It was overcast and quite misty. I cycled past cemeteries every few kilometres for German and French dead of the First World War. Some are very large, some are small. Just a few are from the Second World War, one was Polish. I never knew that the Poles were involved in the defence of France in May/June of 1940. When I was nineteen hitch-hiking through Italy I slept in a field at the base of Monte Casino. Many poles died there alongside the British. As I drew close to Verdun, so evocative for the French as was the Somme for the British, I looked to the north and thought of those terrible days in 1916. I hope so fervently that our children will have the same
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