Take a minute now to think of a teenage boy that you know, it may be your son or your brother or the boy next door. What age is he, 15, 16, 17, 18? Think about what he is like. If he is like most boys he is full of youthful enthusiasm, his mind set on discovering how to be a man but the journey to manhood has still some distance yet.

Still thinking of this young man take a look at this picture on the right. Picture him in this scene. You see he is the age of the teenage boys that were signing up to head off to World War 1.

Full of youthful bravado they set off to fight for their country. The war was their grand adventure. Like the teenage boy you are thinking about would be they were excited and enthusiastic and eager to take on the world.

Now picture the young man you have been thinking of with his legs shot up, caught on barbed wire in no man's land slowly bleeding to death, alone and frightened as the war raged around him. Picture his dead body hanging there between the trenches for days until a truce was called to collect the bodies.

This was the tragic reality for so many young men. Barely more than children, their grand adventure turned into the horrific nightmare that finished with their slow and painful death many thousands of miles from those who loved them.

Those who returned were deeply emotionally and physically scarred by the whole horrific experience. There was some physical rehabilitation of these young men but little psychological aid. Most stoically bore the psychological scars for the rest of their lives. Many never spoke of their experience to anyone, what point would there have been, they could not describe how horrible it was.

So it was that a generation of young men was destroyed by folly and the egos of the aristocracy of Europe.

Take time to remember these boys and young men whose naivety and youthful joy of life was stolen from them and when you think of them do them the honour of recognising the reality of what was done to them.