Lovember: Remembering

The good times.

The toga parties; Friday night happy hour in the Mess; the Batmobile; the obsession with fire; chilli night; Top Gun, The Blues Brothers and The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Queen; sitting on lawns with teeth chattering in ball gowns with loaned jackets over bare shoulders drinking Champagne as the sun rose; the biannual letting out of No5 trousers; the greasy spoons which cured our hangovers with pints of tea; the playing at being grown-ups and failing magnificently; the fun, the fierce loyalty and the camaraderie.

And never forgetting the devastation of a life lost too young. The incomprehensibility of a coffin filled with sand. The cruelty of seeing parents burying their son and a wife left to try and make sense of a world which had robbed her of her soulmate and her unborn daughter of a father. Never forgetting that old lie: dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

For Mongo, Flying Officer Ian Halden, killed 30th October 1991, aged 25 - RIP.
For Gary and Boris and Timbo and Paul and Rog and all the the others - stay safe x