Thanks for those lyrics, Skipy. The sad and bitter irony of the dream of them dying in, apparently, their hometowns, and then at the end the revelation that the "craters and trenches" in which they died were named after those hometowns ...

Whenever the subject of WWI comes up, I make a point of recommending this book: Ghosts Have Warm Hands, by Will R. Bird. It's an autobiographical account of several years of trench warfare from a Canadian point of view. Absolutely harrowing. A shorter, fictionalized book that covers much of the same territory (literally) is Generals Die in Bed. I always forget the author's name (Harrison?), but he was an American who signed up with the Canadian Expeditionary Force early in the war. It contains a horrifyingly memorable description of some bungled bayonet-work that could be a metaphor for the entire war ...