Sent to Paul: As you know, Ron and I go back a long way – to the firemen’s strike of 1977-8. He was stationed with a Green Goddess (the Army’s olive-coloured, ageing answer to Fireman Sam’s bright red truck) in what should have been a sleepy town in the middle of the East Anglian fens, a place called Wisbech. I was a reporter with the local paper, the Eastern Daily Press, and every day would visit in person the police, the ambulance, the firemen (on the picket line) – and the Army’s Green Goddess. It took a while, but eventually the soldiers accepted me and chatted with me freely. This was partly because I was an Army brat – born and bred on Army camps, as both my parents were soldiers. What should have been a sleepy town and an easy billet dealing with occasional bin fires was sadly shattered in early December 1977, when Wisbech became the scene of the UK’s first major loss of life in a fire during the firemen’s strike. I got to the scene, a house on a council estate, at about 9.30am. Your father was standing shoulder to shoulder with all the other soldiers and all the firemen, who had come off the picket line, to fight the blaze in the three-bedroom end-of-terrace house, but nothing could be done. A mother and her three children (two girls and a boy), aged from about five to 12, were killed, mostly through smoke inhalation. Like all of us there, your father was deeply upset by this, we considered it a failure on our part not to have saved at least one. And so we stayed in touch, and I came to know a man with a very strong ‘moral compass’ and a determination to stand up for what is right, a man of self-discipline and an unwavering sense of duty to protect and to serve. But he also had a tremendous sense of humour. I heard from him when he came back from the Falklands conflict. ‘I never want to see another penguin ever again,’ he told me. ‘And they taste nasty!’ A year or so later a thick package arrived for me at the newspaper office I was working in at the time, Beccles in Suffolk. It was addressed to me personally, postmarked Belfast, Northern Ireland and had the words ‘tick tock tick tock tick tock’ handwritten on it. I opened it cautiously and it contained – a copy of An Phoblacht (The Republican), the official newspaper of Sinn Fein, and nothing else. Of course Ron had sent it, and of course he roared with laughter when he knew that a terrified Post Office had managed to get it to me within about four hours of it being posted! Your father was a hero in Wisbech. He was a hero in the Falklands, a hero in Northern Ireland and a tower of strength when faced with uncertainty after leaving the Army. He did his duty without flinching whenever called – and he did his duty because it was right. I am proud to have known for so long a man I admire so much. Cheers Trev Trevethick