The Packet

Not-so-ancient history. Red flags. Mental-health awareness.

Christopher Moore asks, “Can the First World War finally cease to be a living, traumatic presence? Perhaps it is ready to join the Napoleonic Wars or the War of

1812, which are still important and fascinating landmarks but are no longer felt so viscerally” (“The last end of the Great War?” October-November 2018).

There is an approximately twenty-one-year gap between the two world wars, from 1914-18 to 1939

45. Twenty-one years is a mere pause between wars, and they should not be separated. The First World

War might be ancient history to my children and grandchildren, but it’s certainly not to me.

My father served in both world wars. In the First World War he was in the British Royal Marines at the war front in Ypres, Belgium, where he received a leg wound. During the Second World War, my dad joined the Veterans Guard of Canada in the latter part of the war, guarding German prisoners of war in several Alberta locations.