Over five hundred men from Meath died in the Great War. One hundred of those men were from Navan. Twenty Meath families lost more than one member in this war.

The poet, Francis Ledwidge, would be the most famous of these, but many personal tragedies play out in the details of the book: fathers who never saw their children, teenagers who never had the opportunity to grow to adulthood, young men traumatised by the horrific conditions of the trenches.