I would like to comment on Ron James’s letter regarding his grandfather during the First World War (The Argus, November 15).

On Remembrance Sunday, I attended a service at Ditchling war memorial.

As always, the names of the fallen of the village were read out, and a cross placed for each man. This year, an additional six names were read out, belonging to veterans buried in the churchyard. It occurred to me that there was now one thing which unites all combatants of that great struggle: they are all dead, united in the silence of the grave.

In April 1915, my grandfather, aged 41 and with no previous military experience, left his wife and seven-year-old son in Bethnal Green, London, and volunteered to fight for his country.

He survived the war but lived to carry with him until his death in 1953 the horrors and mental scars that the conflict had wrought.

Some years ago, I looked for his grave in the Brighton cemetery where he is buried. I eventually found his headstone, flattened and overgrown with weeds.

He was not one of the 900,000 who gave their lives for their country, but one of the eight million who survived.

Their names are not etched in glory on war memorials but instead lay buried in unremarkable graves around the world, the forgotten heroes of the war.

Perhaps in 2014, after one hundred years, we should honour not only those who gave their lives but also those who, by randomness and chance, did not, and give thanks in equal measure for their gift of freedom.

Don McBeth, Crank Barn, Ditchling

The story of Ron James’s grandfather could also have been written about my grandfather.

Henry Frederick Briggs was born in Brighton in 1893, left school and became a furniture remover before a spell at the railway works by Brighton Station.

He married Florence Blundell and had two children, one being my mother, Lottie, in 1915.

He joined the Royal Sussex regiment and was sent to France in 1915 until he went on leave in 1916.

He was transferred to the Queen’s West Surrey 8th Battalion and was sent to the Somme. He received shrapnel wounds from an exploding shell and died three days later in August 1918 at the age of 25.

He is buried at the Daours extension cemetery. There are more than 400 cemeteries for the Somme alone.

Roy Scarborough, Hailsham