"To all the men I've loved......"

"To all the men I've loved before....who travelled in and out my door. I dedicate these posts, to those I love the most, to all the men I've loved before."

No - no....settle down. This really is NOT gonna be a chronology of the brat's personal shenanigans.... BREATHE... What it IS, and God and the tech angels willing, we WILL 'get er done', is a few snapshots of specific soldiers. Some may have made headlines in their time, some may been recognised by the military for their actions, and some you have never heard of. Well actually, I can pretty much guarantee you havent heard of any of these. But for me, today is ALL about them..

"Ken" was a soldier in WW2.....Beloved by the men who served with him and under him, Ken was well known as a dedicated and principled man. He was a career soldier, devoting his young adult life into maturity to the service of his country. He was reliable, resourceful, and was awarded many medals, some of the highest honours a country can give a hero who selflessly carried out the government's policies in the defence of the freedom of many thousands of people. Those people probably never knew Ken's name but he knew them; saw their suffering, and witnessed some of the greatest atrocities of man's inhumanity to man., and determined each and every day to unshackle the chains of tyranny that held down strangers in strange lands. His men loved him.

"Ken" was also a devoted family man. Married to only one woman his whole life. The loving father of daughters. He was known as a man who loved to laugh, always saw the absurdities, the jokes in life's daily offerings. A gentle man, dearly loved and respected by his daughters, brothers, his sisters, nephews, nieces etc etc; his extended family. His family were never privy to Ken's agonies, the terrible burden he carried - born of all that he had seen firsthand. Those horrors belonged with his men, those brothers in arms who had walked the paths of horror with him. The pain stuck in Ken's heart.

July 1973 was a typical English summer....Ken had left his adopted homeland and returned to the land of his birth. The country he had served so well at great personal cost to himself, and by extension, his unsuspecting family. He travelled alone, leaving his wife and his now adult children, and their young children, his beloved grandchildren, in their adopted country. And there, in a lonely room, on a sunny day, Ken took his own life. Over the course of his military life, and then in some aspects of civvie life, Ken had made major headlines around the world. Driven as he was on the last final day, it is doubtful that Ken even thought about the headlines to come out of that fateful day, and the days leading him to it.

What any of us who are living the military life know, it is often only the family who remember the little, precious, special details of our heroes. Yes, to the world, they are giants among men, but to the families their contribution to the memory banks is never erased. As a daughter looks in the mirror, she sees not only herself. She sees where she came from. As a grandchild who never knew him grows, she is reminded often that the mannerisms of her mum exactly mirror those of a man she never met. And the family, and the world community is a poorer, emptier place for his leaving. And many live because he lived. And very few remember .

Rest easy dad. This Soldiers Angel will always treasure my very own Soldier Angel watching over me....and honour your life and the life you gave me. Love never dies.......
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"Every soldier is one of our own"