SIR - My grandfather Bert Holmans survived the Boer War but was killed at Gallipoli. His brothers, Joe and Alf, died on the Western Front whilst Sid survived but lost a leg on the Somme. Bert is remembered on a tablet in Cranbrook Parish Church. Alf and Joe are listed in the Book of Life in Canterbury Cathedral and Sid lies buried under a British War Graves Commission headstone in Birchington cemetery.
Many war memorials bear the quotation from St John: ‘Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends‘. The memorial scroll sent to the family of every service man and woman who fell in the Great War reads in part 'let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten'
Finally, my wife's father served in Burma. He survived the conflict but died shortly afterwards unable to live with his memories. For him the Kohima epitaph says: 'When you go home, tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today.'
When John Appleyard (T&A Letters, April 10) asks how we should remember those who chose not to fight, I am lost for words.
Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley
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