My school science teacher, Mr Davis, would often, without any apparent reason, fly into a rage and just as quickly return to science. Of course we kids saw it as a laugh to wind him up. I mentioned to my mother a joke we had played and she was really, really cross. It turned out that my father knew Mr Davis and she explained to me that he had fought through Germany and was present at the liberation of Belsen and witnessed the terrible scenes there. No wonder, she said, that he sometimes looses himself. My mother then said something that has stayed with me: never, ever mock anyone who behaves in a strange manner, you don't know what they have been through. I think of this when I see those elderly men that gather on a cold November day to march and honour those that didn't come home. That's why I hold in such contempt those who falsely present themselves as military heroes; Walter Mitty seems too mild a term for them.