One hundred and ten years ago, what US President Woodrow Wilson later coined as "the war to end all wars" begun. Europe, and then the rest of the world, plunged into conflict in 1914 in the First World War.
Remembrance Sunday - which is commemorated today - started being kept as a tradition in order to remember those who passed during the First World War. As the world flung itself into more conflict, even after the war ended in 1918, its scope and meaning expanded.
The First World War was the first truly global war. Nobody was left unaffected. Malta at the time was a Crown Colony: a key base for the Royal Navy and an island which later came to be known as the "Nurse of the Mediterranean".
The island escaped the war unscathed in terms of physical damage - but that is not to say that there was no loss. Maltese men signed up in their hundreds for various branches of the army, and served far and wide.
For eight of them, 1914 - the first year of the Great War, and the first year of a new way of warfare - proved to be their last. On Remembrance Sunday, 110 years later, this is their story.
Malta's first war casualty, and four others who died in Royal Navy service
The Royal Navy's mark on Maltese history - both in military terms and social terms - is undeniable. Countless Maltese served with the Royal Navy all around the world, which also means there would have been casualties.
Between when the First World War started in August 1914 and the end of the year, five Maltese perished while in service with the Royal Navy.
The first was Officer's Cook 1st Class Giuseppe Calleja. He died while in service on HMS Glory on 7 August 1914 after coming down with apoplexy while the vessel was in transit between Plymouth in the UK and Halifax in Canada.
He was 48 at the time of his death. He was buried at sea and is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial in the UK.
Officer's Steward 1st Class Giovanni Teuma was the first Maltese man in the First World War to die as a result of enemy action.
Teuma joined the Royal Navy in 1898 and served across various theatres including the Boer War. He was on board the HMS Arethusa, a light cruiser which had been commissioned that same month, at the First Battle of Heligoland Bight in the North Sea on 28 August 1914.
The Arethusa suffered serious damage at the hands of German cruisers SMS Frauenlob and Stettin and subsequently had to be towed back to the UK to fight another day.
Teuma was not as lucky however. He was wounded by enemy fire, and succumbed to his wounds while still on board the vessel. He was one of 35 servicemen to be killed during the battle.
He is buried at the Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham in the UK. His First World War medals and a sketch of him can also be found at the Floriana War Museum.
Officer's Steward 1st Class Carmelo Buhagiar was another battle casualty, as he perished on 22 September 1914 when the vessel he served on - the armoured cruiser HMS Hogue - was struck by two torpedoes from the German submarine U-9.
The cruiser had been taking shelter from a storm together with two other vessels when it came under attack. It was hit at 6.55am and capsized and sank within 20 minutes. Buhagiar was one of 377 men on board the Hogue to be lost. He is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial in the UK.
Officer's Cook 2nd Class Antonio Mifsud served on board the HMS Bulwark - a ship with a storied connection to Malta, even today as it maintains a relationship with the St Aloysius College Scout Group in Birkirkara.
He was 31 when he died on 26 November 1914 as a result of an explosion on the ship while it was moored in the UK.
Finally, Carpenter's Mate Lorenzo Scicluna from Vittoriosa died on 14 December 1914 of chronic bronchitis and pericarditis. He was part of the Royal Navy and served on land on the 'Stone Frigate' HMS Egmont - the name given to the Malta Royal Navy Base.
He was 42 when he died at the Royal Naval Hospital in Bighi and he is buried at the Kalkara (Capuccini) Naval Cemetery.
Bernard Frederick Paul Bernard: The first Maltese officer to perish (photo)
A significant number of Maltese served in theatres of war abroad within the British Army, some of them in officer roles. Lieutenant Bernard Frederick Paul Bernard was one such person.
Born on 4 November 1894 in Surrey in the UK, he came from a family with a long military tradition. His grandfather, Colonel P. Bernard had commanded the Royal Malta Artillery while his father was Sir Edgar Edwin Bernard, Pasha of Egypt.
The young Bernard was admitted to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst on 28 November 1913, and when war broke out he was assigned to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, which ironically had been stationed in Malta for a couple of years prior.
He landed in France in late November 1914 and was stationed at front line near Fleurbaix, a few kilometres away from the Belgian border. On 18 December his battalion was part of an Allied offensive - an offensive which was decimated by German fire, which cut down 320 men from the Warwickshire regiment alone, including its commanding officer - and Bernard.
Records show that his fellow servicemen witnessed him being killed while cutting through German barbed wire. He was seen with a revolver in one hand and pliers in the other when he was shot dead. He was 20 years old, and was the first Maltese officer to be killed during the First World War.
Bernard's body was said to be found during the famous "Christmas Truce" of 1914 and eyewitness accounts state that he was buried together with some 80 others in unmarked graves in No Man's Land on Christmas Day, 1914.
Casualties in the Royal Malta Artillery
The Royal Malta Artillery was a regular artillery unit incorporated within the British Army but headquartered in Malta. Formed in 1889, having been called the Royal Malta Fencible Artillery from 1861 until 1889, the unit was made up of four companies when the war broke out, with a fifth being raised in 1918.
At the outbreak of the Great War on 4 August 1914, the unit was made up of 421 men with 22 officers.
During 1914, while the unit saw no active combat, there were still two servicemen who died while in service.
The first was Gunner F. Galea, who was part of No. 3 Company, and who died on 14 October 1914, while the second was Corporal F. Grech, who was part of No. 1 Company, and who died on 17 December 1914.
Both succumbed to illness and both are buried at the Addolorata Cemetery.
By the end of the First World War, over 30 men had died while in service with the Royal Malta Artillery, including 16 men who were killed in an explosion on 5 October 1915 while filling hand grenades.