They say that the past is another country.

They say that we can't understand the past, not really, and when we think we do, we have only re-imagined it in our own image. Maybe that's true.

Maybe all we can know about those long dead is what we ourselves imagine of them, based on tentative chains of fact, with no true insight into their minds, or hearts, or souls. But maybe that's all we ever do for anyone, living or dead, friend or enemy.

I think sometimes we forget that the people in the past were, more than anything else, people, real people, with thoughts and hopes and petty hatreds and glorious dreams. Even those whose names we don't know were still real people.

You could have been anyone, I suppose. Perhaps you were a young man, full of excitement at the prospect of the life ahead of him – or perhaps, an equally young man, but confused and alone, still trying to find his place in the world. Perhaps you were older, and enlisted out of a sense of duty. Perhaps you were conscripted and forced to leave a job you loved – or one you were glad to abandon, thanks to your skinflint of a boss. Perhaps there was a family; I can imagine loving parents, a gentle wife, a darling child or two. Perhaps you had no family, and the camaraderie of the army had brought something new into your life, something you weren't sure, yet, that you liked. I don't know. I can't know.

But I do know that you – all the men you represent, who were laid to rest without names - were human. Each of those men was somebody, somebody real. Your death at the hands of the mindless machine that is warfare diminishes me, no matter how long ago it happened. It diminishes all of us.

Your name may be unknown, but 'unknown' doesn't mean 'unmourned'.