"The phrase was: 'Join up with your pals.'

"The British army recruits its regiments by county and town, but the trend was exaggerated in the Kitchener armies. They made a promise very early on when they weren't sure how many volunteers they were going to get, that if you joined up in a group, the group would be kept together. And so you got what was to prove this tragic situation – ghastly situation – of whole streets of young men going off together, whole sort of little factories of young men going off together. It was ghastly because they were all going to get killed together."