Zoe Meakin, a military wife and mother, shares her journey of balancing work and family during her husband's military career. After meeting Dallas and getting engaged within a few months, Zoe focused on her career as a midwife while Dallas served in the military, noticing changes in him when he returned from tours. After having two children together, they travelled to various countries with Dallas’ work but later returned to the UK. Dallas changed roles to work in the prison guard service but suffered physical and mental injuries after an incident at work, eventually being diagnosed with severe PTSD. This also affected their children, who no longer recognised their father. Zoe used her NHS role to secure support for her husband and children despite many challenges. Initially not engaging with support that was offered to her as a military wife, Zoe recently connected with the Band of Sisters and attended a well-earned respite weekend. She remains in contact with other military partners she met there who have all been through similar life events. Her inspirational story highlights her dedication to both her family and career as she works hard to get the support her family needs.

Garry Burns shares an engaging account of his service aboard RFA Tidespring during the Falklands War. Raised in a Children's home, Garry understood hardness and strict discipline from a young age. These qualities would benefit his transition into the Royal Navy when he joined. After enlisting at sixteen, he trained as a Gunner, working aboard many warships from HMS Cambridge to HMS Reclaim. This was before choosing to become a merchant sailor, serving aboard RFA Tidespring as a Paint locker-man. Despite leaving the navy, he would soon find himself entering a warzone after Tidespring was called to Ascension Island in preparation for war in the Falklands. Something Garry thought was a joke because the message was received on April 1st. While sailing to South Georgia with a group of other warships, Garry recalls how they were required to bunch up and mimic cargo ships to avoid detection from Russian Satellites who were monitoring them. At South Georgia, many crazy stories unfolded such as, struggling to send marines ashore after the crashing of two helicopters and the drifting of a recovery boat. After the bombardment and surrender of South Georgia, the crew were given the opportunity to inspect the hamlet of Grytviken. Garry was stunned by how forsaken it was. It resembled a ghost town in which everyone had left, yet much was left behind. During the war, they brought hundreds of POWs aboard, including crew members of the Santa Fe submarine which had limped onto Grytviken after being attacked. When meeting the prisoners, Garry noticed how bedraggled some of them appeared. He managed to form healthy relationships with some of them, especially since he knew Spanish from his earlier voyages in both South and Central America. This made him the crew's unofficial translator. Being born mixed race in the 1950s, Garry never had an easy time making friends, especially early on. However, his life aboard Tidespring proved to be a happy one and his skin colour was valuable in gaining the assurance of POWs who may have found it difficult to trust someone of a more English disposition. Garry's story captures the advantages that come from growing up in undesirable circumstances, from the success that can still be attained and the surprising way in which new bonds can be formed.    

Before the war Moyra Smiley worked aged fifteen as an au pair in France, Italy and Germany to learn the languages. From 1936 aged seventeen she went to a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) camp once a year in Kenya where she grew up and learnt to drive, mend cars and shoot rifles. When the war began, she was stationed as a FANY in Kent and Dover driving ambulances with wounded soldiers who had been brought over by ship. In Spring 1940 Moyra journeyed from Marseille via the Suez Canal to the East Africa FANYs and became a Lance Corporal. She recalls being appointed as the first NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) woman cypher worker and after two years being a Sergeant FANY in charge of a well-established signals and cypher department in East Africa, receiving and relaying messages to local and British intelligence. Moyra looks back fondly at the camaraderie between the FANYs in Kenya, when she lived in a convent outside Nairobi and how everyone pulled together. Moyra continued to use her cypher knowledge to work for M16 long after the war had ended.