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RICHARD MOSTO WAS born in England in 1884 during the reign of Queen Victoria. He lived--as far as is known--an unremarkable life working as a postman, delivering letters and the occasional package in rural Oxfordshire. Around 1915 he joined many thousands of others heading for France and World War I, leaving behind a wife and two small children.

1 July 2008 will be the 92nd anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, which was to prove the most catastrophic day's fighting in the history of the British army. Losses were appalling: of the 120,000 British soldiers who fought that first day, almost half became casualties, over 19,000 of them dead.

With no breakthrough, the Battle of the Somme quickly spiralled into the grim, protracted struggle that typified so much of the fighting on the Western Front, drawing in forces from across the world, including Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and various countries across Africa.

It was at the Somme on 15 September 1916 that Richard Mosto lost his life. His family were informed he had been "killed in action" but Richard's body was never properly identified, his remains lie somewhere beneath the heavy, clay earth of Flanders Fields, with millions of others. In the various battles that raged between the start of WWI in 1914 and its end in 1918 somewhere between seven and nine million soldiers lost their lives.

On 1 July ceremonies will be held across the Flanders area of France and Belgium to commemorate the dead. The Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme carries the name of Richard Mosto, along with more than 72,000 others. There are many other memorials with many thousands of other names. During the Battle of the Somme almost 77,000 soldiers from the countries of the Commonwealth were denied the honour of a known grave. Sadly, of the soldiers from the Arab world, who also valiantly laid down their lives, there are few records.

In the graveyards of the area stand line upon line of crosses, to mark the Christian dead; Star of David headstones commemorate Jewish soldiers and a few arched stones denote the final resting places of Muslims. Yet we know Arab nations provided many thousands of fighting men and even 90 years ago the death of a Muhammed, Saed or Hassan can have been no easier to bear than the death of a John, Hans, Yves or Serge.

Much is spoken of the futility of war but despite all the rhetoric, a few days spent in the Flanders area, observing the conditions under which men were forced to live and die to further the ambitions and aims of political leaders at home, is a life-changing experience. WWI was trumpeted as "the war to end all wars" and those who took part championed as heroes who would help make the world a better place for the generations to follow. But it wasn't "the war to end all wars", just over 20 years later millions more men and women would lose their lives in WW2 and still conflicts continue to rage across the world and in the Middle East region in particular--Iraq, Afghanistan and on the streets of Gaza. Meanwhile, the spectre of war continues to hover over Iran, Lebanon and Syria, as those who will never see armed conflict exchange insults and abuse.

Of Richard Mosto's children only his daughter, Evelyn, survived infancy. Evelyn went on to produce 11 children all of whom she imbibed with her love of literature and music. Today, 92 years after the Oxfordshire postman laid down his life at the Somme, his grandchildren are teachers, chefs, bankers, musicians, IT specialists, entrepreneurs, businessmen and women, designers and doctors. So in a way, Richard Mosto was lucky, or at least lucky enough to have left a human legacy. So many of those he fought alongside (some as young as 13), passed through the world leaving nothing behind. On 1 July, at ceremonies across Flanders the words of the poet Laurence Binyon will be quoted a hundred times. Binyon wrote of the war dead: "At the going down of the sun. And in the morning. We will remember them."

The trouble is we don't do we? If we did we wouldn't keep on making the same tragic mistakes.