What my Dad meant to me

I've never spoken to anybody about my Dad and how felt about and remembered  him.

Today being Remembrance day brings thoughts of Dad closer to me again. Dad was everything that you could ask for in a Dad, wise, funny clever and a friend. Yes i miss him but he is still their when i need him.  Dad was their when i had a son over in Afghanistan in a unit that when a reporter stated that a sister unit suffered 20% causalities and 7 Dead, i really understood the dangers my son was in. It took a brave reporter to be on the front line and record all the horrors of modern warfare for me to understand the dangers my son was in. Thankfully Dad watched over him and he came home safe and sound. Thanks Dad.

When i was in my teens their was a TV program on every Sunday afternoon called World at War. Being a young lad in the 60's who had found music and a life safe from War and starting to make my way in life watching TV about war was not for me. Dad would watch this program that to me glorified War. I was lucky in that conscription had been stopped and life was ahead of me a life to be enjoyed. I didn't want to see or hear about war and killing.  Slowly over the years i have grown to understand just what that TV program meant to my Dad. It was a reminder of what had happened in his life. It also showed that we must never forget the sacrifice that was made to give me the life i had then as a teenager and the effect on me now grown up and now 63 years of age.

During Dad's retirement Dad did so much for the other Old soldiers of the various associations that Dad as a part of. For those who needed help he was their for them, always happier to do for others than have others do for him.   

Today i have so much respect for all that the previous generations had to do to make this a safer place for me to live. They  went to war and so many never came back. As a child my own Granddad one day got out an old handkerchief discoloured over the years and inside their is a penknife smashed. That penknife was in his breast pocket as he made his way over a canal/ river and as he got out he was shot by a sniper in the heart. Lucky for me his penknife was wrapped in his handkerchief, the bullet smashed the knife but didn't kill my Granddad. One day that knife will be passed over to me and i will show and tell my children and grand children the story. A story of how we came so close to not being here.