In his early twenties, my grandfather was fighting in the trenches in the so called Great War; my father was a prisoner of war in Germany having fought and been captured in the desert of North Africa and I, having graduated, was in my first job.
Where is my son, Jonathan, at 22? Having graduated, he is back packing around SE Asia and I am following him almost day by day, tracking his photos on Facebook and his whereabouts on Google Maps. I even talk to him on Skype. What I find amusing is that he tries to tell me where Hanoi is, thinking that I don't know, when at his age the Vietnam war was in full swing and then he tells me he has passed through a sleepy little border town called Dien Bien Phu and is even more surprised that I knew where he had been although I was only 6 years old when the French garrison there was overrun.
Oh how the world has changed but the wars still go on; though I haven't had to fight in one and hopefully neither will my son.
