My Great grandfather also fought in WW1 in 1915/1916 near Verdun but he was in the other side...I guess they both would be surprised to see us having fun together at the XI fest...
My father fought in Algeria during the Algeria independance war...another dirty war.As he told me he was not a hero just a 20 years old guy trying to survive...and for years trying to forget what he saw there.
My Grandfather was in French army ( artillery ) when WW2 started.He was made prisonner of war when German army rushed into France.He managed to escape just before they lock them in a prisonner camp near the German border.It took him 4 months to come back to Paris,walking at night to avoid German patrols,as he told me it was a hell of a trip ! He lost so much weight during this trip my Grandmother didn't even recognize him when he knokned at the door !
He spent the rest of the war in French "Resistance army" blowing bridges,trains and everything related whith German army...He was so drunk on D-day that my Grandmother thought he was about to die
I consider him as a hero even if he told me he was not.He was a man of few words and told me what he did during war only one time a few weeks before he passed out.He had no regrets but told me that war made him a killer but certainly not a hero ...i don't know but i'm glad we are in 2012 and the only way we have to kill eachother is a videogame
I spent myself one year in the army in 1985/86 . I had to as at that time we had the " military service" in France . I was not too bad at shooting so they putted me in the sniper team...hoppefully the only things i had to kill were targets at the shooting range