I try not to involve you in my personal life as this is a business column, but sometimes the urge is strong so I hope you’ll forgive me this once.

Recently we were in Salzburg for the wedding of my nephew and, after the celebrations, my sister and I decided that we should take a trip that had been 70 years in the making.

The trip? A visit to the grave of my Uncle Max.

Warrant Officer Maxwell Wellman Marsh (the same first name and second initial as me), age 32, was aboard a Lancaster Bomber. His was one of seven shot down over Austria on 7th July 1944… almost 70 years to the day of our visit to the beautifully maintained Klagenfurt War Cemetery.  A cemetery containing the earthly remains of the 599 souls who had perished on or above once enemy territory.

I never knew my Uncle Max but my Dad and his family knew and loved him as a brother and a son. As far as we know there was no partner to grieve him although we don’t know with whom he might have been romantically involved in England where he’d gone to join the RAF at the start of the war.

It was only afterward that I found out my sister reacted similarly to me as we walked through the gate of the cemetery toward Row A.  We were visiting Max, probably the first members of the family to do so in seventy years.

I just couldn’t help it and tears welled up and ran down my cheeks as I thought about the uncle I never knew in a grave around 15,000 kilometres from home with only his crew for company.

What a waste of a life, what a sheer incredible waste of so many lives, I thought.

But standing there I asked myself, was it really a waste?

That I could stand there of my own free will in a town, a country, a continent that had seen so much war, so much bloodshed meant that Max and his mates had helped win victory.

But what a price to pay… hundreds of thousands of young people like Max giving their lives so that we may have freedom in our own.

What might Max have been, what might he have done, had he survived?

We’ll never know but it behoves me and every member of my family to pause and remember him. More importantly, to honour his memory by giving of ourselves to make this world a better place.