"One of them had his brother killed at his side and the other was too young to be a soldier so he looked after a mule team in the transport corps in Ypres.

"One day he was at a crossroads with his friend from the same village and their mules. It was being shelled and when my grandfather's mules didn't want to move he said to his friend 'You go now' and this man went over the crossroads but he and his team were hit by a shell and annihilated.

"On my grandfather's death bed he was still talking about that day. He carried the guilt of that all his life."

Just one story on the day when the country and its former empire does its best to remember more than 900,000 war dead from the first World War, 450,000 from the second and the 16,000 service people commemorated recently in a new monument to those who've died in training, battle or as a result of terrorist action since 1948 in Palestine, Korea, Malaysia, the Falkland Islands, Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, among others.

In Walkley cemetery, vicar of St Mary's church Melanie FitzGerald was helping local historian Hugh Waterhouse lead a tour round the cemetery's 43 war graves (containing 44 casualties).

After comprehensive research in libraries and newspaper archives, and by speaking to the children and grandchildren of Walkley's war dead, Hugh had been able to gather information about the lives of several of the servicemen buried in the cemetery.

There was private Reuben Goude, who was gassed at the front and died of bronchitis five years later. There were the Grant brothers, Horatio, James and William, who all died of their wounds from the French battleground in their twenties.

There was Joseph Siddall who died of pneumonia a month after being called from war duty in 1915 to see his ailing wife Eleanor, who died less than an hour before his arrival home, and there was gunner Alfred Letch, who was sent to guard an airfield in Singapore where he was captured by the Japanese army and shipped back to Japan in cramped conditions without food. He died in a POW camp a couple of days later from intestinal disease.

And dozens more, whose only record is a name, serial number and age, many of them teenagers or in their twenties, many of whom took years to die of wounds received in the trenches.

"I think about my own children, about the same age as many of the people buried here," said Hugh Waterhouse. "I think of the pain of those people gathered around those graves and the fact it was repeated so many times."

"I've come here today because I love Walkley and I love Sheffield and I love local history," said Roger Walters, who along with his son Martin was one of a dozen people touring the cemetery on November 11 to read out the names of the buried service people and place crosses on all the official war graves.

"This is all part of living here and being part of its history.

We've found somebody here who lived on my street and I walk past that house where in time passed someone waved their sons goodbye from that doorway."

As a teacher Martin is concerned that we may be seeing the last generations of people who will see Remembrance Day like previous generations. "Many children just don't get the concept of war or remembrance," he said.

"What chance do the war dead of Iraq or the Falklands have of being appreciated?" said his father. "They'll probably say 'Am I bovvered'?"

At least the dead in Walkley look like being appreciated for some time to come.

The friends of Walkley cemetery have managed to clean up many parts of the old cemetery, as much as voluntary work will allow, and after help from the BTCV and a small lottery grant, it's hoped that some clearance work can be carried out on the cemetery woodlands, to follow the boardwalk and small seats put in over the last few years.

The War Graves Commission was on the point of moving the Walkley graves out of the cemetery before the Friends group was formed and started tidying up, said Hugh Waterhouse.

After the last of the 44 crosses was planted, two minutes' silence was observed and Melanie FitzGerald read: "They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old, age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them."

Then, as the dusk gathered over Walkley, she took out a copy of a letter given to Hugh by a descendant of private Harvey Crookes, buried in France but remembered on one of the Walkley gravestones.

"Dear Mrs Crookes. We regret to inform you that your husband 18724 Private Harvey Crookes was killed today. A bullet hit him in the right temple and he passed away very peacefully. We laid him to rest at about 5 o'clock. A short prayer was said and in the circumstances he had a very nice burial."