ON NOVEMBER 11 we remember the fallen in world wars.

One hundred years on from Armistice it is right to concentrate on that, however we should then reflect during the following week on the other important points and people.

Those who fell gave their lives, however those who came home often gave their lives too in another way.

Broken bodies, blindness, missing limbs and other vital body parts. All too often we overlook unseen scars and injuries that seem to heal with long term consequences. Those who served in places that are not remembered.

My grandfather served in the Royal Navy as a volunteer.

The ships he served on were twice sunk, dumping him in the Baltic Sea and North Sea.

He came home, but the freezing waters left him as years moved on with terrible arthritis and a wheelchair in later life. He is not shown as a war casualty.

My father joined the Army underage and later the RAF (also under age) after seeing civilians in London strafed by German aircraft and served in the Far East.

He saw the allied soldiers tortured in Japanese prison camps and also witnessed the after effects of the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki: terrible injuries to babies, children and women, many of whom died months or years later.

Victory over Germany is celebrated and remembered, but few victory marches followed defeating Japan and any mention is more the horror of those atomic bombs, not the Burma Star soldiers and airman, they are mainly just a side comment.

Dad came home, but could not enter a church for over forty years due to the mental scars at such a young age and came close to a breakdown when, decades after the war, the Japanese Emperor visited the UK at the invitation of the Government.

A local drunk in Dorking was in fact a surviving prisoner in Burma which bent his mind so much his marriage failed and he thought the Dorking hills were Burma.

He is not shown or remembered as a war casualty.

Mum was in the last group of child evacuees from London and the first V2 landed in 1944 while they were boarding the train in Chiswick bound for Gloucester.

Unlike the V1 these bombs made no sound and no one knew what it was, the children and mothers were rushed on to the train which sped away with luggage still on the platform.

Apart from bullet wounds, the most common injury during both world wars was the loss of testicles due to explosions at their front, no-one mentions these (thankfully I am not aware of any relatives suffering that) and burns from all kinds of events, both civilians and service people on all sides.

These people tended to hide from society, often alone, for years until they died.

Name and address supplied