As in France and Britain, the figures, if calculated for the contingents most immediately liable for duty by reason of age, display an even heavier burden of loss. ‘Year groups 1892–1895, men who were between 19 and 22 when war broke out, were reduced by 35–37 per cent.’108 One in three. Little wonder the post-war world spoke of a ‘lost generation’, that its parents were united by shared grief and that the survivors proceeded into the life that followed with a sense of inexplicable escape, often tinged by guilt, sometimes by rage and desire for revenge.
