At the age of nine, I could cross the length of Glasgow on a succession of buses, wearing regulation garter-topped stockings and compulsory cap and - if I'd done well enough to earn the honour in last week's test - with a First World War medal on a striped ribbon pinned to my brown blazer. I must have looked like a chocolate soldier.

Related Quotes

I could not have the honour of being a German soldier because of my imprisonment in the First World War. And in this world war the Fuehrer refuses to allow me to serve as a soldier.

— Fritz Sauckel

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My father was in the First World War.

— Doris Lessing

FatherFirstFirst World

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

FirstFirst WorldFirst World War

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

— Erich Maria Remarque

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My dad was a big admirer of Sergeant York stories from the First World War.

— Clint Eastwood