Jim, here is another veteran.

Most veterans rejected the 'poets' view'. One old soldier, named Henry Mellersh, declared in 1978 that he wholeheartedly rejected the notion that the war was 'one vast, useless, futile tragedy, worthy to be remembered only as a pitiable mistake'.
Instead, wrote Mellersh: 'I and my like entered the war expecting an heroic adventure and believing implicitly in the rightness of our cause; we ended greatly disillusioned as to the nature of the adventure, but still believing that our cause was right and we had not fought in vain.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2339189/MAX-HASTINGS-Sucking-Germans-way-remember-Great-War-heroes-Mr-Cameron.html#ixzz3suChnmXm