Sir, Little did people realise the consequences of those fateful shots on June 28, 1914. They were in a faraway land and who was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand anyway? What did Balkan politics and the obligations of a convoluted treaty have to do with ordinary folk?

Almost two months to the day later Trooper Fred Thomas fired the first shot of the First World War. A German cavalry officer from the Air Force. Ordinary folk were soon to find out.

By mid-September 1914, 228 young men had joined up as the "Kendal Pals". The volunteers were identified by an armband. Those without an armband got the stare'.

Your country needs you' Lord Kitchener had pointed out. It was the same in every town. The nation was gung-ho and the party liner was they'd be home by Christmas.

Mr and Mrs Shaw of Milnthorpe christened their second son Harry Kitchener as a patriotic gesture. That's how it was.

Christmas passed. The Kendal Pals had burgeoned to 1200 by May 1915. By now it was all going horribly wrong. Come 1916 conscription had replaced volunteers. Generals on the Front were running out of manpower.

July and August of 1916 saw terrible days for the old grey town of Kendal. The knock on the door from the telegram boy was dreaded.

The Somme Offensive was the most brutal of brutal battles. The Westmorland Gazette of July 15, 1916 published photographs of 103 Kendal Pals dead or missing.

After two years of conflict there were many ways to die in or out of a trench. Only by reading the outpourings of war poets were Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson et al can the full horror be imagined.

Until about 40 years ago the remnants of the Kendal Pals and the community remembered their sacrifices every July. When a halt to the carnage was called on November 11, 1918 the overall number that had perished was too numbing to contemplate. The tiny town of Kirkby Lonsdale had lost over 40. When it was all over Prime Minister Lloyd George said it was "A World War that seared mankind". He was right. And to this day it is not "over".

An estimated 200,000 British and Empire troops still lie encased in mud. Farmers in north east France and Belgium refer to spring time as "the harvest of the boner".

Not for them the ages of man. Not for them the luxury of burial. Not for them peace in eternity. It was the war to end all wars. But the veneer of humanity is very thin indeed.

John H. Glaister Local Historian Crewe