Last updated 11:06, Saturday, 08 November 2008

The Great War was supposed to have been the war to end all wars. Needless to say, it couldn’t live up to its promise.

This 90th anniversary of First World War Armistice has given opportunity to revisit the crude, cruel atrocities that claimed millions of young men’s lives in the most dreadful conditions. And it has been an opportunity none could have taken without being shaken by the experience. The BBC is at its best when it sets out to inject detailed relevance to history’s big picture. It has done so in fine form with its coverage of this important anniversary.

Personalising First World War tragedies from which have grown human triumphs, My Family At War (BBC One) has been a moving, disturbing, deeply thought-provoking emotional journey.

Tracing the battle-scarred stories of courageous soldiers who served selflessly for the greater good, celebrity descendants of the fallen showed an ignorance of which most of us are guilty. To a man – and woman – they knew next to nothing of how terrible that long, torturing war had been, nor how valiantly men and boys had served their country.

Matthew Kelly was seen painstakingly filling in the blanks of his great uncle’s service at the front – his fight from muddy trenches, hand to hand combat, two weeks off to recover from the bullet he took, back to the front, capture and death in a German prisoner of war camp. Few could have failed to share Kelly’s tears at his uncle’s grave.

Phil Tufnell’s pride in his grandfather’s service as an aircraft mechanic was illuminating and touching. It is of course right that Remembrance should be sure to move on to offer honour and tribute to all the fallen of all subsequent wars. But it is also important to register with more than mere passing thought how and where our tradition of homage began.

In those dire trenches, on those muddy killing fields, in belief of a better future, millions of young men walked towards death with firm belief and pride in the honour of laying down their lives for who we are now.