[Mamie Dunlop] recalled watching her two older brothers enlist during the Second World War, and joining the army when she was old enough. "Basic training really puts you in shape," she laughed. "I was in good shape."

"I lost some school friends and a cousin," she said. When her brothers returned from serving in the Second World War, they had seen things they couldn't talk about, she said. "They wouldn't speak about it. They wanted to keep it to themselves."

"I'm worried, too," said Dunlop, facing the spectre of her great-niece ever being posted Afghanistan. "They'll blow up their own country," Dunlop said of the Taliban and insurgents.