He was captured at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 and remained a prisoner for the rest of the war. His capture was clearly fortuitous. His unit had suffered multiple losses and its a miracle he made it this far. This group, taken in a German camp, look, to me at least, oddly comfortable. My Grandfather (circled) even has the faintest smile on his face, and if my impression is not purely my imagination, his smile is not that surprising after what he'd been through to get here. In his life, he said little of his experiences and some of the family found him oddly vacant, slightly lacking of a will to get on, or, so to speak, make his mark. Knowing what I now know, this is understandable - all of us may, to a greater or lesser degree seek meaning in various ways and want to express ourselves, or create something. However, I can see how all this might be trumped outright by a catastrophic early vision of hell on earth - a truth so raw in tooth and claw that it renders all remaining things meaningless. Its a case of "How do you follow that?" and maybe, for Grandad and many other survivors, the simple answer is that you can't.