I will be as quick as I can, and I would like to apologise for not being here for the entire debate; I was at Buckingham palace for the 95th anniversary of the Not Forgotten Association. I am glad to be back.
I want to say very quickly how very frightened those boys on the front lines must have been. None of us can understand how ghastly it must have been. I felt a little of that when in March 1993, my staff sergeant beside me was shot in the head by a sniper. That was on the front lines in Bosnia. I was determined to go, and I went. What was so awful was my tummy and my fear—the jitters. Overcoming that and trying to go forward was difficult; my feet felt like lead. That was just one little instance, so let us try to think what it must have been like for those men from Ulster and those other brave men on 1 July 1916 when they had to climb those ladders and go over the top in that dreadful row—with all that fear and all that kit and all that thinking of their mothers. Soldiers always think of their mothers. I think we would all totally understand that we can have no idea how bad it was for those boys who fought in the first world war; we just have a little glimmer from what they left behind and what they said. God bless the lot of them.
4.33 pm