Why this song is so poignant.

It was released in 1970 and if you’re old enough to remember the 70s, you’ll remember something else too. Although there were lots of old ladies around, there were relatively few old men. That’s because an entire generation – around 800,000 young British soldiers – were wiped out in the First World War. 55,000 were killed on one single day, exactly 100 years ago, on the first day of the Battle of The Somme. Any old man who was a grandad in the 1970s had almost certainly fought in this horrific war and witnessed scenes of carnage that no human being should ever have to see. So yes, it’s a dreadful record but it’s not hard to see why it struck a chord with the nation and went straight to No.1. Its tragedy was that so few grandads survived to hear it.