My name is Michael Smith.
As you can see from my contribution, "Memories...History...", I am very much aware of my generation's special responsibilities, being the very last people alive able to bear witness to events and conditions during those perilous years.
I'm a 66-year-old grandfather, with two young grandsons whose current thirst for knowledge about the War is proving to be unquenchable.
In common with others of my age I had an "absentee father" for most of the first seven years of my life. Tragically, this became a permanent situation for far too many of my contemporaries, but in this respect I was lucky; my father came back (in spite of Mum swearing at him for bringing us a Christmas tree - see my story).
It is right, of course, that we continue to honour the memory of the husbands and fathers - and all who went away to become heroes; but the mothers who stayed behind must also be remembered and honoured for keeping their children safe and fed in the most trying of circumstances, and for the sacrifices they made to ensure that we were able to pass through the darkness to a life of freedom, relative comfort and some kind of peace.
A pity that there have been some over the years who have seemed intent on dismantling all this, and more recently some who have even begun advocating that we just throw away the poppies and forget all about it.
To those people I say, "At least wait until those who can remember have gone, before you tear down the War Memorials and turn your backs on History".
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