In August 1914 young British volunteers cheerfully joined the Military services, often lying about their age, and marched off to France in the belief that it would all be over by Christmas. They were known as the British Expeditionary Forces. The majority thought of it as some form of adventure. Alas, the wanton carnage was to last four years three months, and all concerned, friend and foe suffered the harshest conditions ever known to mankind, in the bloodiest campaigns fought in the trenches. In October 1914, trench warfare really began and the Germans in desperation to hold their positions had to muster further troops to maintain these positions. They conscripted thousands of ill equipped and poorly trained young men some no more than schoolboys. They were slaughtered in their thousands by machine gun fire. The German high command later admitted that it was a 'Massacre of the Innocents' This also applied to our young men dying in thousands