SIR – Let’s not forget the bravery of the men that went over “the top” during the First World War but as the first wave set off, mown down by machine gun fire, the rest still in the trenches watched in horror, knowing full well what was going to happen to them.

They must have been absolutely scared stiff. They shook hands, wrote notes to their loved ones back in Bradford, pinned them to posts in the mud-soaked trenches, knowing full well they wouldn’t be coming home again.

Some generals were killed in the war, but the high command, sat in their plush headquarters either in Paris or London safe and sound away from the bullets and shells, were the ones to blame for this.

The government, the Prime Minister, should have stepped in and sacked the high command. These men should be brought to book. It doesn’t matter if it was 100 years ago, they are long dead.

Visit the battlefields of France and Belgium and see for yourselves the remains of trenches, the mass of cemeteries, the ages of some of these young men, some as young as 15. How did these boys get past the recruiting officer?

Stand under the Menin Gate at Ypres, listen to the Last Post sounded at 8pm every night. Read the thousands of names under the arch, names of men with no known graves, ‘missing’, blown apart, then you will cry, just as the hundreds standing there did.

Today we have men dying in Afghanistan, a war that has nothing to do with us.

Just as the First World War, whatever was happening in Germany and Europe, nothing to do with us, as with Europe before the Second World War. Sticking our noses in.

God bless them all.

B Barraclough, New Works Road, Low Moor