Truly humbling.

That’s the only way to describe my latest assignment – filming the unveiling of a memorial to Wolverhampton’s Forgotten Army.Having covered the Staffordshire Regiment’s final march through the city a few weeks ago I was already acutely aware of how being in the presence of men who put their lives on the line as a matter of daily routine can make your own worth to society feel crushingly insignificant.

But that only half prepared me for the combination of awe and deep respect which consumed me as I interviewed veterans of the Second World War campaigns in Burma and Japan.

All now in their 80s, age has weathered them to varying degrees.

But while their physical prime belongs to the past, their shared experience of a brutal, horrific war should guarantee them lifelong status as giants among us mere mortals.

These men became known as the Forgotten Army as their efforts in the Far East were overshadowed by events in Europe and our eventual victory over the Nazis.

There was no hero’s welcome to mark their return home.

Instead they were absorbed back into normal life without ceremony or recognition.

I say “normal,” but for many the deep psychological wounds inflicted on them by war meant life would be anything but.

A post by expressandstar.com reader Roy Jenkins on yesterday’s story recalls how his Uncle Len, a former prisoner of war in Burma, stayed in the garden shed for a long time because of the similarity it bore to his wartime confinement.

One veteran, Norman Challenor, summed up the mixture of emotions at play during yesterday’s ceremony.

It was wonderful to finally have a memorial in the city, he told me, but at the same time the last thing he wanted was to remember the horrors he lived through as a young soldier in the Far East.

His most unshakeable memory was of becoming surrounded in a section of jungle by enemy troops.

One of his company was so frightened of being captured, he wanted to blow himself up.

And Norman went on to tell me how despondent he feels that the sacrifices he and his comrades made in living through the pure horror of war appeared to have been wasted on a society which becomes more undeserving, day by day.

Those men thought they were fighting to safeguard our freedom and way of life.

But was it a way of life ultimately worth the heavy price paid?

Norman now despairs that the society he fought to preserve is one in which he doesn’t feel safe walking the streets at night.

And so the unveiling of the memorial at St Peter’s is a timely one.

Because never has it been more important to remember the extremities of human experience Norman and his fellow soldiers visited in our name.

As the inscription on the memorial says: “When you go home.
“Tell them of us, and say
“For your tomorrow
“We gave our today”