Somewhere on the Somme

My father, George Nevin Parker, lieutenant in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, in a garden somewhere in France, looking fairly relaxed during the Battle of the Somme. He survived the slaughter, but never smiled like this when I asked him about it. The most he would ever say was, 'It wasn't too good.' Rather like the other survivors of the battles of the First World War, now almost a century ago. I could never persuade him to say more - except that he heard the news of the armistice and the cease-fire whole sitting in a latrine just behind the lines! He lived until 1970, luings never quite recovered from the German illegal use of gas.