It all began when I was about 15 years old. I found this big old cigarette lighter and was told it used to be my fathers. I liked it and started to collect everything, that looked remotely like a cigarette lighter.

Now what really is trench art? I found the following definition at www.trenchart.org.
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"...Trench art is a highly evocative term conjuring up the image of a mud-spattered soldier in a soggy trench hammering out a souvenir for a loved one at home while dodging bullets and artillery shells. This is an appealing but very false conception of the reality of this art form. A few types of trench art (finger rings made from melted down aluminum are a good example) could be made easily in a trench during lulls in the fighting, but the hammering involved in making many trench art pieces would have been greeted with unwelcome hostile fire from the enemy. Trench art items made during the war were in fact created at a distance from the front line trenches either by soldiers ‘at rest’ behind the front lines, by skilled artisans among the civilian population, by prisoners of war, or by soldiers convalescing from wounds as handicraft therapy. Pieces described as ‘trench art’ have the following distinctly different origins:

- War souvenirs collected by soldiers or non-combatants during the war and during the demobilization period and modified in some way to serve as a remembrance of the war.
- Souvenirs crafted by soldiers during the war.
- Souvenirs made for sale to soldiers by other soldiers or civilians during the war.
- Souvenirs made by prisoners of war in exchange for food, cigarettes or money.
- Memento of the war made by convalescent soldiers.
- Post-war souvenirs made for tourists visiting the battlefields.
- Post-war souvenirs made by commercial firms in ‘trench-art style’."

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