We don't know our hearts until life puts us to the test, and WWII fascinates because it was the last time everyone was simultaneously pushed to their limit.

I do think it is harder to acknowledge our strengths, or to forgive ourselves and each other for our shortcomings, when there has not been a result we can all agree on.

I was astonished to find that the positions my grandfather had defended were now overgrown and entangled with trees and thorns. I suppose I had developed a sense of reverence for the locations he described in his memoirs and letters - the forts and the high emplacements. I had expected them to have been preserved in some way.

Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.

This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.

Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.

A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.