What if and other questions

Listening to/watching: C4's 40 greatest #1's ever. I'd forgotten how great the video is for the Aerosmith/RunDMC remake of 'walk this way'...........

My great uncle, Michael Tarleton, signed up for the New Zealand 2nd Expeditionary Force during the first world war, the 'great' war as it was known, at least until until the second world war showed the world what greatness we were really capable of when it came to killing each other en masse. His story is part of an collection of stuff that includes several photos of long dead ancestors who look like me (which is kinda disturbing, even if highly logical), which we were looking at at my parents place earlier tonight.
He left New Zealand in March 1917. He was sent to a frontline unit in France on the 9th of July. On the 10th of August 1917 he was wounded. It is recorded that he reached a casualty clearing station, where he died, from a 'G.S.W penetrating, chest' (G.S.W-Gunshot wound I assume). The dates and details form part of the telegram sent to his mother in Dunedin to inform her of his death in action, which my mother has. It's a fairly terse document. Mum also has the clipping of his obituary from the local paper, alongside the other soldiers who died that week.
He was buried next to a Private Sautherly. Did they know each other when they were alive? If so did it occur to either of them that they would spend eternity together, thousands of miles from home? Did the German who shot him survive the war? How did he end his days? What if my great uncle had lived? Would he still have been around in 1976, when I was born? What would he say if you could have told him in 1917 that someone would be writing about him 89 years later?
I wonder about these what if things, when I'm not concentrating on what is, which is far more important. Still wondering can be a fun indulgence. I like the idea of endless parallel realities, where every possible outcome can occur.
What if I died in a car accident in 1995, a 'what if' that came very close to being a 'what is' (that's a whole future post in itself right there...) ? How would that have affected the lives of those around me? What if I had been merely maimed?
What if the Soviet Union had decided to act pre-emptively in late 1983 when its leadership thought (seriously) that the US and NATO were about to attack them? That one is somewhat unpleasant to ponder at length.
What if Labour hadn't won the 1984 election?
What if Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, JFK, had lived?
We'll never know.