There’s a scene near the end of Dr Zhivago (the movie) where the sick Zhivago sees Lara, his lost love, walking down the street as the tram he’s on passes her by. He struggles to get off and catch up with her but collapses and dies. She walks on. We’ve spent the entire movie, the entire book, focused on them, and then the story pans out and they become just two among the nameless millions.

Dad was one of 311,000 men who fought at El Alamein. It was a decisive but — based on the people, military and civilian, who fought and died — relatively minor WW2 battle. (There were over six million frontline troops involved in Barbarossa, for example.) Cliff was a working man before the war and remained a Signalman throughout it. Posting his stories here has reminded me how proud I am of him. In my mind he wears his hard work and wounds alongside his medals as badges of honour. One of the ordinary people to whom we owe everything, including our freedom.