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By Armistice Day next year, events to mark the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War will have been well under way. But what are we supposed to be remembering? Well, you might say, we are supposed to be remembering what actually happened. But that may not be as easy as it sounds. Take just one really shocking incident: the alleged crucifixion of a wounded Canadian prisoner-of-war, said to have been nailed to a barn door with bayonets by his German army captors. When this story first circulated, there was uproar in the press and questions in Parliament, and urgent inquiries by the authorities to establish the facts. As symbolic proof of enemy barbarism, it came to stand for "everything we are fighting against", we decent British people, defending civilised Christian values against a savage foe. They execute wounded prisoners of war; we do not. Sadly, I don't need to point out the relevance of this to contemporary events. But it may well never have happened. There were a lot of German atrocity stories around in the First World War, most of which - unlike the Second - did not stand up to examination. The truth is, of course, that bad things went on, on both sides. In fact the Germany of the First War was as much a Christian country as Britain was. According to the author and poet Robert Graves, many British soldiers became very disillusioned about organised religion once they realised this. Just as they were supposed to be fighting for God, King and Country, their adversaries in the trenches opposite were fighting for God, Kaiser and Country, virtually identical. But if the troops were cynical about church leaders, they nevertheless turned to the basics of Christian faith to help them through the ordeal of war. The fortitude shown by Jesus Christ as he faced his own death was a constant reference point. He was a fellow sufferer. That is undoubtedly why the story of the crucifixion of the wounded Canadian prisoner had such resonance. As ordinary soldiers tried to make sense of their experience, one book became a constant source of solace: Pilgrim's Progress, by the 17th century Puritan writer John Bunyan. For instance the appalling mud in which soldiers had to fight the battle of Passchendaele - the name itself redolent of Christ's passion as told in the Gospels - was frequently referred to as the Slough of Despond, and the battlefield itself as the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pilgrim's Progress is basically an allegory about courage in pursuit of the good, in the face of adversity. When we remember the men who fought and died in that war, whatever side they were on and whatever their creed, we surely owe it to them to inquire what inspired them, and what kept them going in unimaginably awful conditions. It's all part of the same story.