Chapter 978 Fuck Me Crazy Soldier Brother:>Ep27

• They say the key to telling a story is to know the ending and work backwards along the story 'til you come to the beginning, but where exactly is the beginning? When my five-times great-grandfather decided that a life as a cotton trader in India was too boring and so bought himself a commission in the East India Company army, beginning the family tradition of military service? Does it begin when my great-great-great grandfather scouted a hillside in Natal in 1879, in a place called Isandlwana, spotted a few Zulu's, and neglected to look over his shoulder at the other 20,000 Zulu warriors bearing down on him and his regiment, the 24th Regiment of Foot? Or is it when my Grandfather went on leave from Brunei and attended that party at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and so met my grandmother for the first time? Or does it maybe start with my birth in the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Woolwich, right next door to my father's posting at the Woolwich Arsenal? All I can figure out for certain is that true beginnings are as difficult to grasp as smoke, you can go cross-eyed trying to work out the exact point a tale really truly begins, and only the story itself makes sense. All I know is that all the men in my family were soldiers, and all of them had died quite messily as soldiers, which seemed to be the other family tradition. Very depressing.
• I was born to Juliette and Lawrence Boscombe, Lieutenant-Colonel Boscombe, 7th (Parachute) Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, part of 16 Air Assault Brigade and just as gung –ho as all that implies. Wherever the British Army was deployed, whether as part of NATO peacekeeping, or in Northern Ireland, or as part of the EU security forces, there was my dad, in the thick of it.
• My brother Gerry was born two years after me, presumably after a burst of friendliness with my mother on the rare occasions when both my parents were in the same country at the same time.