They also serve

I wrote a book once about the Second World War. It wasn't very good and it sold very badly, but I enjoyed the research.

The structure of the book called for each regiment and corps in the British Army having its own short chapter and, perhaps inevitably, the most interesting stuff was about those who served in a non-combatant role - the kind of people who tend not to get much mentioned in the media's memory, but without whom the war effort would have ground to a halt.

I think there should be greater celebration of the contribution made by the Royal Army Pay Corps, for example, or the Royal Army Veterinary Corps.

Or, this being the seventieth anniversary of D-Day, the Army Catering Corps - because those who landed on the Normandy beaches would soon need feeding. Then there were those in the Pioneer Corps whose responsibility it was to unload stores, to evacuate the wounded and to bury the dead.

Nor should we forget the Army Dental Corps. Medical personnel comprised four per cent of the British forces in Normandy seventy years ago, and for every thousand men who landed on D-Day, one was a dentist. Landmines can do terrible damage to a man's jaw, and it was a key part of the dentists' job to perform emergency surgery.

Not quite as dramatic or cinematic as the image of infantry storming the beaches, but it takes a certain courage to do your work under fire when you're unarmed.