Peter Rhodes on forgotten battles, fighting a crocodile and risking death for an unknown family

Nigel Farage has been banging on about how little our young people know about D-Day, the epic invasion of Nazi-occupied France by the Allies in June, 1944.

But was there ever a time when teenagers knew or cared much about military operations 60 years before they were even born? In my experience, based on pilgrimages to the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars, old people moan about the ignorance of the young, overlooking the fact that when they were young themselves, they didn't know much or give a damn either.