LEST WE FORGET, INDEED

"At the end of the second world war, Germany lay under 14 billion cubic feet of rubble. Three million of its homes had been destroyed. The railway network had been obliterated. A million French citizens were in captivity. Over 50 million Europeans were dead. In 1939 a great massed phalanx of German tanks had fanned out across the continent, crushing and torching everything in its path, followed by the infantry and – it was said – "a stampede of riderless horses like the wreckage of the Apocalypse". Five years later – in 1944 – the Allies had responded, repulsing the heinous advance with four times as much armour, transforming vast swathes of Europe into tank-mangled sludge."

The older I get, the more shocking this war.