Wales lost - but only just. That said, it wasn't the most exciting of games.
Private Peaceful was very sad. But it was a good play, with excellent performances from the main characters. At one point they had the stage set to look like trenches and the soldiers had to go out from the trenches (and get shot) or crawl along through the mud and smoke.
My grandfather was in the first World War and I grew up knowing he'd had a bullet go straight through him, fortunately missing his vital organs, but as a child it's not something you think about, how that might have happened or what it would have been like.
Grampie was just Grampie, sitting in the corner, in his quiet world - he was quite deaf by then - smoking, and listening to the radio next to him. Seeing the stage last night and suddenly picturing him as a young man going over the top and being shot, and living in the appalling conditions in the trenches, was quite a revelation.
He's long dead now, 'a forgotten hero of a forgotten war.' (And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, by Eric Bogle)
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My father was in the battle of the Somme, came home permanently lame from multiple wounds. I read Birdsong in his honor. But I don't think I could tolerate a drama about it.
It's based on a Young Adult book, Boud. It's a set text for GrandDaughter1's year.
No one likes to contemplate the horrible reality of war, then or now, for soldiers or civilian victims.
I love John McDermott's And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, maybe because I first heard his version.
Something that would be hard to imagine what it felt like if you were never actually there.
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