Most people know that after taking my degree and attending RMA Sandhurst I spent some years as an officer in the British Army. I served without particular distinction, but it is a period in my life of which, like most ex-soldiers, I am inordinately proud. I left to marry and emigrate and though I completed some reserve service in 2005, I have not really looked back. The funny thing is, I think of those times every single day.

Partly this is sentimental. It was my good fortune to serve alongside literally dozens of real characters, at regimental duty and on what, in those pre-Iraq/Afghanistan days, passed for operations. The mere recollection of those guys brings a smile to my face. It is sobering to think that some of them have spent the time since I saw them last shuttling between the fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some have been injured, some badly. Some have been killed.

Even when I was in the army, Veterans’ Day (called Remembrance Day in Europe) was more about my grandfathers’ generation. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War II, one in Europe, one in the Far East, but for me, nowadays, the focus has shifted. Now I feel a deep responsibility to remember the sacrifice of serving soldiers and veterans of my own generation.

And, of course, the dead.

I’ll be keeping my meager medals in my sock drawer today…. but I’ll be wearing them in spirit. And my dangerous black beret…..! (SK)