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Serial Saturday: Down South in the Service of the Queen - Chapter the Eighth

The first time I read this, I had assumed that Our Hero was a literary device. Not necessarily fictional, but perhaps an imagined member of the troop, pieced together from several actual marines. Now, I know that the name Andrew has an awful lot of significance for you, and am thinking more deeply. Obviously, you knew and served with people who lost their lives in active service. It's easy for a reader to understand that in the abstract, but the reality can be hard to imagine. The fact that our narrator was one such person, and a real one too, helps to make the ending far more poignant. I'm not going to pretend to know what it's like: it would be insulting and patronising to even try. The reminder that families are torn apart - even in the "cheapest" and "easiest" of wars - helps close that vast gulf slightly, even if it can never bridge the gap completely.
 
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