As I kept the two minute silence at 07.28 this morning to commemorate the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme, with an eye on the television screen showing the scene at the battlefield memorial at Thiepval to honour the dead with no known grave, one of those dead gazed down at me from his portrait style photograph high on the wall above. My uncle, a Lieutenant in the Royal Scots, 18 years old, lasted 23 days, before being blown to pieces leading his men into Delville Wood.
His brother, my father, survived the war, although his health was shattered and through most of my childhood he was an invalid. He used to tell me vivid stories of what it was like on the Western Front, which added to my own childhood experiences under German bombs and rockets, has meant that for me European Unity has always been a mandatory obligation to those who suffered hell on earth and gave their lives, that we might get to where we are today.
Until last Friday.
What exactly have we done?
And for what have we done it?