Yes Triplane I thought it quite a classic Christmas line and it gave me a good chuckle. There is another even better one further up the thread.

Now Christmas as YOU have brought this up:

"I adimired your slimy attempts to nause up another thread by quoting the rule book"

Here's how it seems to work Christmas - you post a load of idiotic, far-fetched, emotive, hysterical crap, most of it just made up - and then I take you to task for it deploying what I regard as being reasonable logical thought backed up with relevant historical fact and statistics. You then claim that you didn't mean that in the first place but refuse to address specific points made that point to even your modified story being the load of crap that it is. We are then subjected to massive screeds of cut'n'pastes the relevance of which can at times be mystifying. I then pull you up further on it and then you call me nasty names and sulk.

Rule Book Christmas?? What on earth are you going on about? Your old Docker pal and all those deserters he knew picked up in all that "constant" mud by Readcoats riding around in trucks. Picked up to be shoved into the first advance line of any "push" and then if they survived they would be picked up again to be shot either before or after being condemned at a drum-head court martial, whose clerks obviously to increase the chaps morale posted notices announcing the deaths on the trench noticeboard. No rule book Christmas all I did was post the actual numbers of those shot for desertion for you. Now if you dispute those numbers or the detail relating to the conduct of courts martial then let's hear it.

Christmas IIRC you once regaled us of your terribly hard and discrimination ridden life growing up in Liverpool, so I was rather intrigued at this bit:

"A friend from Liverpool contacted me and asked me if I would help him interview his Grandfather, who he said was getting old and had done a lot of interesting things in his life.

A group of us drove down from London one Friday and met at my friends house"

How posh for you and your chums to drive down to Liverpool from "Town" - How utterly Edwardian, did you pack your Fortnum & Mason's hamper to sustain you on your journey?

Also liked this bit:

"He described the permanent, deafening noise of gunfire and how young men, little more than boys, would turn around and walk away from the front, not in an attempt to desert, just to get way from the sound."

Know the feeling well - I do the same when twats play Beatle songs in folk clubs.