Reflections…

Tomorrow (Tuesday 20th March) sees the repatriation of the 6 soldiers from 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment and the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. I shall be thinking of those families tomorrow at 1.30pm when the plane lands at RAF Brize Norton, returning their loved ones to them under Union Jack covered coffins.

My experience of my brother’s repatriation is still difficult to talk about. I’ve written several blogs numerous times and each time I’ve not been able to finish it. It’s still too raw. I hope to be able to write about it one day, but not just yet.

The repatriation unit at RAF Brize Norton is fairly new. My brother was the second repatriation there, along with Marine David Fairbrother who was killed several days after Jonathan. The staff there were lovely, especially the tea ladies. I do feel for them as there is nothing they can do except constantly offer tea or coffee. It’s a very difficult job. I remember watching the plane return to the tarmac outside the unit after being de-armed (about an hour after landing) and we all watched it return from inside the unit. The tea ladies just turned to look to each other whilst we stared past them at the plane. I glanced to look at them both and noticed that they had tears in their eyes. I shall think of them tomorrow too, looking after those 6 families during such an awful time.

As if having to go through a repatriation isn’t heartbreaking enough, you’re limited to the number of people permitted to attend. Seven per family. We found this very difficult, as several family members couldn’t attend. How do you choose 7 people out of the whole family; decide who goes through and who stays behind to watch from the sidelines with everyone else? Those six families are having to go through that same awful decision – choosing who attends and who doesn’t. I do not wish this task on anyone.

These families are at the beginning of a very long grieving process. We were there 6 months ago and sometimes I feel like time has dragged when other times it feels like it’s flown by. So much has happened in those six months – Christmas, New Year, birthdays, engagements, anniversaries etc. Each significant date brings a bittersweet emotion. Happy for the date, but sad that he’s not here to share it with us.

We’re no way near the end, if that ever comes. We now have an inquest date (5th April) and people say we’ll experience some sort of closure. At this moment I don’t think that we will. Having experienced my Dad’s inquest it certainly gives you answers to questions, but by no means does it help you to reconcile as to what has happened and why. We shall see….

RIP
Cpl Jake Hartley
Pte Anthony Frampton
Pte Christopher Kershaw
Pte Daniel Wade
Pte Daniel Wilford
Sgt Nigel Coupe

I will!

Well, there I am saying that we haven’t had a great start to 2012, hence the need for a quick getaway holiday, and then everything changes again. This time for the better.

For the first time in many, many months I actually went to work on a Saturday. The last 5-6 months have had a shocking affect on my work hours and I finally decided that something had to be done about it. I’d used my last 5 days of leave on Egypt and have absolutely no flexi hours left. My new leave year starts in April, but I could do with a few more days off before then as friends from New Zealand are due to visit in March. My original plan was to work 40hrs a week and shave a little bit off at a time, but I soon realised that it was going to take me months to actually get back to the allowable limit, let alone have enough hours to take a day off. Fortunately, my boss has been extremely understanding. I can work from home but there’s too much to distract me there, and with Dan being at home too it would be a nightmare. So off to work on a Saturday it was.

After a false start (I left my security badge at home and had to return home to get it), I finally got down to work. Sitting in a large open plan office on your own is a bit daunting, but armed with my iPhone music, snacks and plenty of milk for tea, after several hours at work I finally looked up and it was home time. Yay!!

I hurried home to find Dan waiting for me in the kitchen. It turned out that he’d spent the whole morning baking cupcakes, icing and decorating them. He had gone out to buy champagne, edible letters for the cupcakes and then spent the rest of the time wondering when I was coming home. He popped out the kitchen as soon as I stepped through the door. After requesting that I take my coat off and announcing he had a surprise for me, he took me into the kitchen, picked up a guide to Japan and said that he had decided on something. He opened up a cupcake box which was on the kitchen table to reveal 12 cupcakes snuggled inside, spelling out ‘Marry Me?’ and said that he had decided that our next big adventure was to be Japan – for our honeymoon. I was so surprised and shocked – and happy! After a few more lovely words (I won’t say what, I don’t want to embarrass him further) he asked me to marry him. It’s safe to say that I said yes, and not just because he made me cupcakes 😉 Later on he revealed that he wanted to spell out ‘Will you marry me?’, but I’d used one of the 4 eggs he needed to make a batch of 24 earlier in the week, so settled for making just 12. Oops!

So, after celebrating with some champagne, we rang our parents to tell them the news. Now, we just need to plan the wedding, which is very exciting but is already becoming slightly stressful. But, we’ll get there.

Dan’s been amazing over the last few months. I don’t know how I could have got through those months without him and he continues to give me and my family support. He’s been there to drive us around, give advice, comfort me when upset and ready to give a (manly) hug when needed. I’m very, very lucky to have him and very happy to be marrying him.

Inquest update…

Just a quick post… Since I posted in January about military inquests I’ve been given a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. I now know that JJ’s inquest will be in Darlington, which is where he lived with his wife, Lisa, and her daughter. This means there shouldn’t be a huge delay as it won’t be held in Oxford as I first thought. Also, we’ve heard whisperings that it could take in place mid-March, but this isn’t definite. I have also been given this DVD to watch to give me better insight to the inquest.

Although I have already attended an inquest before, I didn’t know at the time that the family can ask any questions, even question witnesses, throughout the whole proceedings. It was only afterward that I found out. We didn’t have anyone advising us as to what would happen at the time, so I’m hoping this DVD will inform me better for Jonathan’s.

Another soldier who died on the same tour as my brother, who also served in 1 Rifles, was Cpl Mark Palin. His inquest was held last week, which again gives me a little hope that Jonathan’s could be sooner than I thought.

Our holiday to Egypt…

Well, 2012 didn’t get off to the great start that we’d hoped so Dan decided that we needed a quick getaway. A week in the sun, time to relax and just chill out away from it all. We had originally booked to go to Cyprus, but the hotel was going to be under some maintenance during our stay, so we changed it to Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Now, I’ve already been to Sharm and the last time I was there I was a tad poorly. Put it this way, I ended up losing weight on holiday… But I was prepared to give it another go, especially as this time we’d be going all inclusive (and could then avoid the local eateries), plus I fancied a bit of snorkelling. It was a good decision on our part as the weather was a lot warmer than Cyprus, plus we missed out on all the snow chaos taking place back home.

So, when we arrived in Sharm it was almost 9pm and a balmy 16 degrees – yay! We were taken straight to our hotel, which was absolutely lovely. All the staff were brilliant and couldn’t do enough for us. I was slightly worried when it got to the point where the lovely man on reception knew our room number by heart – were we bothering them too much?? Well, it probably didn’t help that we needed him to come out to our room to fix the safe – twice! Between us both we really struggled to code in the safe, which is slightly disconcerting as we both work in IT. Now, I know a safe isn’t a computer, but we should be able to figure out some simple instructions. Apparently not.

We met our Rep the next morning for local information and the usual hard sell of excursions. We were keen to do a few things, but nothing too strenuous. We had discussed beforehand as to whether we would visit the Pyramids whilst we were out there and Dan wasn’t so sure about it as I had already been. A few years ago I spent 3 weeks in Egypt; one week on a Nile Cruise visiting all the temples, a few nights in Luxor then I flew on to Sharm for a week and ended the trip at Cairo. By the end of the trip I was so ready to go home. Cairo isn’t a glamourous city and I’d pretty much decided that I’d never go back again. I’d done the Pyramids, so why would I want to go back? However, whilst we were sat listening to the Rep I realised that it wouldn’t be fair on Dan to miss out on the only remaining ancient Wonder of the World. He’d been to visit Chichen Itza and had previously talked about seeing other (modern) Wonders of the World. When the rep had finished I checked with Dan as to whether he was really was ok about missing the Pyramids – would he regret not seeing them? I was pretty sure that I wasn’t coming back to Egypt again. It is lovely, but I would like to visit another country where I haven’t been before rather than keep returning to the same one! After discussing it for a while, Dan agreed that he really did want to see the Pyramids. The next day we booked a day trip to Cairo by air and upgraded to the VIP version, which meant private transfers and our own car and guide in Cairo. It was definitely worth the extra money.

The downside of going to Cairo for the day: the very early morning start – 4am. Yikes, not the way I like to spend my holiday! We were in Cairo for just after 7.30am and went straight to the Citadel. Our guide was a lovely lady who lived in the 6th of October City (I love this name!) and she was such a good guide and looked after us very well, we couldn’t have asked for more. The citadel was a lovely start to the trip. I hadn’t visited it before so it was good to visit somewhere new. We walked about the grounds, went inside the mosque and rounded off the tour with a view of the city. It was a lovely morning, and we were assured that it was one of the better days of the week. The sun was shining and it was warming up to about 16 degrees. As we looked over the vast city you could cleary see a thick layer of smog hovering just above the buildings. Cairo is home 22 million people, with another 5 or so million commuting in daily for work/tourism. This gives you an idea as to how busy the city is, so you can understand the thick smog. We were due to go straight onto the Pyramids from there, but our guide informed us that there was a change of plan due to traffic and we were to go to the Egyptian Museum instead. Little did we know at the time, this change of plan was due to the worries of protests taking place in Tahrir Square in the afternoon, after afternoon prayers.

Many of you will have seen the news last week regarding the clashes between the fans of two Egyptian football teams in Port Said. This happened the night before we were due in Cairo and we were aware of the news, but not overly concerned about any reprecussions in Cairo. However, we learnt when we returned to Sharm that there had been new protests in and around Tahrir Sq that day. We spoke with our guide about it at the time, but she didn’t give us any cause for concern at the time. Towards the end of the day mum text me asking if we were safely out of Cairo. At the time I thought this was a bit silly, but when we watched the news that evening regarding the protests I can see why she was concerned. We never noticed anything odd at the time, even though the musuem is with a few hundred metres of the square.

We enjoyed the museum, even though it’s information overload! It’s all about dynasties, kingdoms (lower and upper Egypt), mummies, treasures etc etc. There are so many items in there (approx 120,000), it’s impossible to see them all in one/two trips, so I was lucky to see things I hadn’t previously. Plus, I’d forgotten a lot of the information I’d been told a few years ago. From there we had lunch on a Nile river boat. Now it wasn’t a Nile riverboat like I had imagined. It was on the Nile and it was a boat but it was TGI Fridays!! Haha, not quite the Nile experience you’d imagine! The food wasn’t great, but it was good enough to eat and the main thing is it didn’t give us a dodgy tummy. #Win!

And then onto the grand finale: the Pyramids! Most of you will have no doubt seen the James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, with Roger Moore. You see him running around the Pyramids during a Sound and Light show in the evening and it all looks very tidy and exciting. Unfortunately, the Pyramids are surrounded by what looks like wasteland. It’s such a shame and a few people on the trip said that they felt it was a bit disappointing at first when you see them, but they do redeem themselves once you see the panaramic view of all three pyramids. We walked up to the great pyramid and also went inside the King’s tomb. To get to the tomb you have to climb up a long incline in a passage which is only 1 metre high. It’s fairly strenous (if you don’t exercise much, like me!) and a bit scary if you’re claustraphobic. I don’t really like tight spaces, but wanted to go inside anyway and was pleased that I did. To be honest, there’s not much to see once you’re in the tomb like there is at the Valley of the Kings, but it was amazing to be inside the pyramid.

We walked around the rest of the Pyramids, ignoring the hawkers trying to entice us to buy a collection of metal/plastic pryamids (“3 for £5 – lovely jubbly”) and then went down to see the Sphinx. We did try to get photo of us in front of the three pyramids, but I managed to pull a strange face in the photo (I’m not at all photogenic), so you won’t be seeing that one. However, we did get one of us in front of the great Pyramid.

The day in Cairo was busy and manic, but a much better experience for me this time around. I’m glad we went and also glad that we managed to get back to Sharm without getting caught up in any protests!

Once back in Sharm we slipped back into just relaxing and generally doing not a lot. We had a lovely day on a boat in the Red Sea cruising around Tiran island and we stopped in several places for snorkelling. We saw loads of fish around the coral reefs and even managed to spot a few stingray. The only other notable thing that happened to us was that we experienced an earthquake whilst eating dinner one night. It measured between 4.5 and 5.1 on the Richter scale and didn’t seem the phase any of the hotel staff at all, in fact we weren’t quite sure whether it was an earthquake at first as they completely ignored it and we thought we were going slightly mad 🙂

It was such a good idea to get away for a week, a BIG thank you to Dan for organising us a fab hotel and holiday xx

For those of you who have been asking about pictures, I have set up a Flickr account and hosted them there. Unfortunately, as we didn’t think we’d be going to Cairo, Dan didn’t take his posh camera, so you’ll just have to do with mine on the ol’ Panansonic Lumix I’m afraid.

Four months and counting…

It’s been just over four months since JJ died. That’s a just over a quarter of a year; 126 days or about 3,000 hours…

Four months may not seem long for some, but within that time we’ve marked what would have been his 34th birthday, his 1st wedding anniversary, our first Remembrance Day and Christmas without him and my niece has had 3 letters returned from Afghanistan. Not quite one letter a month, but almost. One has some sand stuck to the sellotape which she used to tape it down and she daren’t open it as she feels ‘this is sand from where Dad was’. It’s safely tucked in her memory box, along with the two other letters, photos and anything that she has to remind herself of him. She misses him every day and posts this fact regularly on Facebook, either on her wall or on JJ’s memorial page. He put a load of photos on her phone before he left to go on tour, and she has created a short video of him from these.

She’s soon to be 13 in March and most ‘almost 13’ year olds would be counting down to their birthday by now. Instead, she’s counting the days that he’s not been here. It never even occurred to us that he wouldn’t be here to say Happy Birthday to her on her next birthday. So many important birthdays that he’ll miss. There are so many rites of passage within her life that she is still yet to experience, and he won’t be there to support her through them.

The reason why I started thinking about all of this is because of a tweet I saw yesterday morning regarding an inquest of a soldier killed in Afghanistan back in October 2009. The inquest started yesterday – over 2 years since he was killed. This was one of the many things we asked about when our visiting officer, Kevin, was assigned to us the day after JJ died. How long until the inquest? Well, you might as well ask: ‘how long is a piece of string’? I’ve read so many news stories about military inquests over the past few years and again today whilst doing a bit of research, and so know that waiting two years isn’t unique. When my dad died in November 2008 we had to wait until the following September for his inquest. This felt like such a long time, especially as we weren’t issued with a final death certificate until after it took place and found it very difficult to settle a lot of his financial dealings. A final death certificate has been issued for Jonathan as his cause of death is already known, so at least his will and finances can be dealt with as soon as possible. But it’s not just about dealing with his estate.

Looking on the internet, I found an article from June 2008 about waiting times for inquests for military fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan. It detailed that prior to May 2005 the longest waiting time for an inquest was 4 years and 109 days and that 44 out of 90 families had to wait more than 3 years for a verdict. After May 2005, it would seem that this waiting time dropped considerably, but families still had to wait for more than a year.

Military inquests are dealt with by the same coroner’s office that deals with civilian inquests. Any military personnel who are repatriated via RAF Brize Norton are the responsibility of Oxfordshire County Council. The local coroner can encourage home coroners to take jurisdiction of the inquest, but not when it involves Commonwealth, Scottish or multiple fatalities, which are at least half the cases and more often the most difficult ones. At the time of my father’s inquest in 2009, which was held in Salisbury (Wiltshire), repatriations where held at RAF Lyneham. This is why we believe it took so long for his inquest to take place, because they were also responsible for military inquests. Also, until March 2009, Wiltshire hadn’t had a full-time coroner which had resulted in numerous backlogs. A full-time coroner was appointed, and the previous coroner (part-time) was moved to focus on military inquests. In October 2011, Wiltshire still had 19 military inquests to complete, by which time the repatriation process had been handed back to Oxfordshire.

My question is: Why do we not have a dedicated team of coroners who can work on clearing the backlog of military inquests?

The previous government decided to create a chief coroner position to ensure inquests were set up quickly and conducted by coroners with specialist training in military matters. Ministers originally estimated £10million startup costs plus annual running costs of £6.5million. Last October the current government made the decision not to appoint a chief coroner based on costs. Their decision was thankfully overturned after a year-long campaign by the Royal British Legion. However, has this post been filled yet, and what effect, if at all, will it really have on the speed of the inquest process?

If it takes two years for JJ’s inquest to take place, then Megan will have already celebrated her 14th birthday and be well on her way to celebrating her 15th. My nephew Oliver, who started studying for his GCSEs last Sept, will have completed his exams and be well on his way to college/sixth form or may be even working in his first job.

How long do we have to wait…? Four months and counting…

** I’m by no means claiming to be an expert or an authority about military inquests, so please excuse me if there any inaccuracies in my blog. Please feel free to correct me 🙂

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas everybody! Apologies for being so quiet for the last few weeks, it’s been a while since my last blog and I’ve really felt the need to blog. However, my laptop decided to break a few weeks ago and I just can’t get to grips writing a blog on Dan’s scrunched-up netbook keyboard. However, I’ve been very lucky and been given a brand new laptop for Christmas by him – so spoilt!

As I now have a working laptop, I thought I’d write a short blog about our first Christmas without JJ. I say ‘without’ but to be honest we haven’t had a Christmas with him for many years (about 6 yrs). And so although we’re missing him terribly, we feel that because of this there’s not a gaping hole in the day. Usually we would give him a ring to check how his day is going and talk to the children if he had them over the holidays. We managed to speak to Ollie and Meg via Skype this morning, which is a brilliant invention! My mum absolutely loves it as she can keep in touch with the grandchildren and still see them grow up even though they’re based in Northern Ireland.

Usually Jonathan would be so difficult to buy for (like most men I think!). Mum would usually buy him the latest John Grisham book and a bar of Toblerone. She has still bought a bar for him this year and it is currently sitting on the sideboard waiting to be opened. I would end up buying him something from I Want One of Those.com – or a gift voucher. And you’d be safe in the knowledge that he’d tell you what he’d bought you before you even got to open your present! He’d say something like – ‘Oh sis, I’ve only got you….’, and there the surprise would be gone! I think every year I’d have a quiet whinge about it! But, what I wouldn’t give to know what he’d got me before Christmas Day again…

It was also difficult finding a present for Mum this year. There wasn’t anything she really wanted, and so with the help of my sister-in-law and Dan, we managed to gather a load of pictures of him and the kids together. Dan processed them to make them a bit better and we put them in a photo album for her. We managed to keep this a surprise, although it was very hard in the run up to Christmas. Mum has been feeling a bit blue and I almost wanted to tell her that we had managed to get some photos of him to cheer her up. I felt awful not saying anything, but knew it would be worth saving it for Christmas Day. A few days before, she was cheered up and was given a brilliant present – his ‘Bar and Grill’ sign that he made out in Afghanistan. He set up his bar and grill using some old armoured plating to make a BBQ. Mum had requested this back in September when he was repatriated, and she wasn’t sure if it would make it’s way to her. We were in luck, as JJ’s best friend managed to get hold of it (and a mug my niece decorated for him) and passed it onto Mum. Along with that and the photo album, I think her Christmas has been a good one considering. As she said, they’ve been the best presents she could’ve asked for. You can see his sign just above him in the picture below:

Mum’s staying with me and Dan for Christmas. She arrived on Christmas Eve and we did a bit of last minute shopping and then chilled out at home. Today, we all piled into the car and went down to Dan’s family for Chistmas lunch. What a lovely day we’ve had! Dan’s 4 month old nephew was there and he really made the day. He’s such a cheery chap, he giggled and smiled all day. He must be exhausted now! We had a lovely lunch with brilliant company. The wine flowed and lots of food was eaten and I’m now sat back at home writing this whilst watching Harry Potter and both Dan and Mum are fast asleep!

So, although JJ’s not here, I’m pleased to say that it’s not been all too sad. He’s been talked about all day – we’ve had a few laughs and a few tears. More laughs than tears I’m pleased to say. And later on tonight we’ll raise a glass in memory to him, and to others that have not returned home to their families.

The kindness of strangers….

One thing I’ve noticed since my brother died is how kind people can be, especially strangers. I know people can be kind, but it is just surprising the number of people who are brave enough to reach out to you when you lose someone close to you. I say they’re brave because they could quite easily not say anything (some people I’ve known for a long time have completely ignored it), as it’s not easy to know what to say when someone’s grieving. I’ve always felt that unless that person has specifically asked people to not to talk about it, then I believe it’s always best to say something rather than nothing.

When I posted the news of my brother’s death on Facebook I had so many comments from friends offering their condolences – some via the post I made, some via my wall and others privately in a message. Over the following weeks I had friends of my brother’s contact me to offer their sympathies, generally imparting a funny story or a memory about him. Quite a few I remembered from school and some had served with him in the army. One that really sticks in my memory is an email from an ex-soldier the day before the funeral. He was so apologetic for writing to me, not knowing if it was the right thing to do and whether it would cause me upset. He said that he was privileged to have served with my brother and that he had so many good memories of him. He talked about times he’d spent with him, his ex-wife and the kids at their home and how Jonathan had once slapped him on the knee soon after he’d had key-hole surgery on it! He said the look on his face was classic when he’d realised what he’d done. I was fortunate to meet him at the funeral the next day, have kept in touch and could now easily count him as a friend.

Not surprisingly, my mum and sister-in-law (Lisa) received a huge number of condolence letters – some very official, some not so. Lisa found a letter on the doormat simply addressed to:

The wife of LCpl Jonathan McKinlay
Darlington

It came from a member of the public wanting to pass on their sympathies, but not knowing her address, they put their faith in the postal service. I was stunned that Royal Mail delivered it successfully! I was even more amazed that someone felt so strongly about writing her a letter that not even having the correct address discouraged them from sending it.

As well as official letters, Mum’s also had a lot of letters from other mothers who have lost their sons to the Iraq or Afghan war, offering their support as well as their condolences. These were quite difficult to read and were emotional, but offered a lot of comfort to her. She has since vowed to return the sentiment for all mothers of Rifleman who lose their lives.

On the day my brother was being repatriated from Afghanistan I contacted someone, on a whim, who I was following on Twitter and who was serving out in Afghan. I didn’t know him, but he has a huge following as he regularly writes about his experiences in the forces via his blog. My brother recommended following him before he deployed, and I had been keeping up-to-date with his blogs. He was tweeting a countdown to his return home and so I simply tweeted that I wished him a safe journey and that my bro was LCpl McKinlay. I had tweeted him before with no response (I don’t hold it against him, he’s generally inundated with tweets from random people like me), so I wasn’t expecting anything back. Within minutes he responded saying that he’d met my brother on a few occasions and what a ‘top fella’ he was. Instantly, I was in tears. I was sat a work, trying to not show myself up, but the rush of emotions that came with the response was immense. He had met my brother! I really hadn’t been expecting that in the least. That afternoon, whilst I was sat in the car reading his blog out loud to Dan, I got another message from him saying that a ceremony would be taking place shortly for my brother and the marine who had also died that week. He promised to get photos and send them on. It was a great comfort to have photos within minutes of the ceremony taking place, knowing that Jonathan was being looked after and receiving a fitting recognition before being sent back home to us.

Not long after this all happened, I decided to raise money for the 1 RIFLES Swift and Bold Appeal in Jonathan’s memory. In the short term the Appeal is used to provide much needed support and assistance for the families, girlfriends and boyfriends of the deceased and wounded. In the medium and long term excess funds are used by the Rifles Regimental Trust (Care for Casualties appeal) to fund meaningful projects for the wounded and their families. We regularly hold cake sales to raise money for charity at work, so this was an obvious one for me. I set up an online fund raising page in his memory and a respective twitter account for it. With the help of very good friends at work, we heavily advertised around work via our intranet and the use of posters. A friend designed a brilliant poster, which I would regularly encounter throughout the building leading up to the sale and shortly after – whether it was making a cup of tea or wandering somewhere to see a customer, my brother would be smiling back at me…

The cake sale was a success – we raised over £750! We had a crack team of trusty bakers and sellers, and without them we wouldn’t have raised even half as much. As well as selling cakes, we sold Poppies for the RBL (it was a week before Remembrance Day) and the 1 RIFLES wristbands. We had several cakes to raffle, including a fabulous cake made by the wife of a colleague. She had put her heart and soul into it, designing it around the Rifles’ regimental colours.

Other kind people turned up to donate cakes for us to sell too. In one cake, I found a lovely post-it note and it almost broke my heart! It simply said:

‘With love and help from Rafferty aged (nearly) 3 x’.

The queue for the sale caused havoc for a while. It meandered out the office, around the rotunda and up the stairs. People trying to get past gave up and found another way to their destination.

A lot of friends and family donated via the online page, and although I tweeted the page to my new twitter followers, I didn’t honestly think a stranger would donate in my brother’s memory. How wrong I was… After closely watching who was donating, names that I didn’t recognise starting appearing on the list. Who were these people? I started looking at who was following the twitter account, and found a few names cropped up. I tried to contact as many as possible, to personally thank them and ask if they wanted a wristband sent. I tweeted with a lovely lady who explained that she had donated as part of her own challenge to do one thing for charity each week and asked if there was anything else she could do to help. Another follower who had donated also got in contact. As well as donating to our page, he also gave very generously to my nephew and niece’s similar fund raising page for 1 RIFLES. They held a 5 hour sponsored silence the day before my brother’s birthday, which was especially difficult for my 12 year old niece, Megan! I was really touched by the kindness and generosity of these people, and will always be grateful towards them. Between us, we have managed to raise over £3000 for the Swift and Bold Appeal. To those of you who donated, please accept a BIG thank you from me and my family.

These are just a few examples of the things that strangers have done for us since my brother died. Of course, we mustn’t forget the veteran flag bearers at the repatriation ceremony in Carterton and outside the John Radcliffe hospital; or the mother of the injured soldier who collected poppies from the Festival of Remembrance for my mum. The list could go on….

Everyone who has shown us kindness has helped us through the difficult process of grieving and given us the comfort that although we’ve been through a terrible experience, there is a lot of good out there in the world.

That fateful knock at the door…

When I woke up on Wednesday 14th September, I was excited.  It was our last working day of the week.  The next day we’d be off to Torquay for two days to celebrate Dan’s birthday.  A trip to Paignton Zoo (we’re big kids!), a lovely hotel and a meal at a fabulous restaurant/pub down near Babbacoombe beach.

We had planned to leave work early, but Dan popped into town just before 4.30pm to get some batteries for his camera flash.  And then I got caught up in a discussion with a customer.  I recall having a bit of a rant about something afterwards (this is quite usual for me!), but that was it.

We dashed home and started getting ready for going away.  For us, that meant getting everything washed and dried in time for the morning!  I’m not renowed for being very organised with the washing, in fact, over the last few weeks whenever we’ve had to stay at mum’s we’ve turned up with a pile of washing that needed drying over night ready to wear the next day.

I gave mum a quick ring just before 9pm.  We discussed nothing in particular, just catching up.  I think we had a giggle about something that happened that evening to mum and then we heard it.  A very loud knock on the door.  Not the doorbell (she has one), but a very loud knock.  “I’ll ring you back in about 2 minutes” mum said.  We hung up and I popped into the kitchen to get a drink.  By the time I sat back down the phone started to ring.  I answered with a cheery “Hello”.  What I heard next changed our lives.

“Becca, Jonathan was killed this afternoon.”

As soon as I heard it my heart dropped.  It had happened – the very thing I had ignored since he’d been deployed in June.  What was going to happen now?  How would we cope?

I told mum we were leaving straight away and hung up.  There wasn’t anything I could say to her at that moment – we just needed to get to her as soon as possible.

My first thought was to ring my uncle, mum’s brother.  I quietly hoped that neither my cousins would pick up the phone; I didn’t fancy having to make small talk before requesting to speak to Tim.

Thankfully, my aunty answered and I was quick and to the point, “Gerri, I need to speak to Tim”.  As soon as I gave him the news I asked him to ring mum straight away.  I was so worried about her being on her own.  What was going through her mind right now?

Ridiculously, I remember fussing about the load of washing sat in the machine.  So, we hung the washing up.  Why, you ask?  I haven’t a clue why…  It just seemed a really important thing to do.  We started to rush around getting ready to leave – packing a bag with a few things, checking the windows were shut, etc.  I remember standing on the landing, hugging Dan and saying “I’m so sorry about what’s going to happen over the next couple of days”.  Our trip to Torquay would obviously be postponed, plus the fact that his birthday would be marred with sadness.

Mum lives about 40 minutes away, 30 minutes if you get a clear road.  We took longer as the main road was shut and we had to turn back and find another route.  I think it took us about 45 mins in the end.  When we arrived there were two men from Blandford Camp, all suited and booted.  One was in the kitchen making tea.  Names were given all round and promptly forgotten.  My mum and I just hugged each other.  She was desperate to hug Dan too, in need of a manly hug.

It turned out that the Army guys had been trying to get hold of mum for a few hours, but she had been out.  They’d visited the neighbours, asking if they knew where mum was.  They had little information to give us.  They couldn’t tell us an exact time; how he died or whether anyone else was killed or injured.  They knew very little, and were sorry for it.  All they could tell us was a time, something which I think was still incorrect in the end.  All mum wanted to know was “their time, or our time”.  UK time or Afghan time.  They didn’t know.

They departed soon after Dan and I arrived, having given us their contact cards and promising someone would visit in the morning, but to contact them at any time if we had any questions.  We were on our own.

It’s safe to say that we didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.

Mum and I sat drinking tea until about 2.30am.  We talked about Jonathan in general, laughing and crying.  After attempting to sleep and failing, we ended up squashed in the single bed in the spare room, whispering, making plans for the next day.  There was a lot to do; people to inform.  We were up early and mum started off ringing good friends in Cyprus and I popped over to mum’s neighbour to let him know.  Mum has been blessed with wonderful neighbours and Doug gave me his condolences and asked permission to pass the news onto another good neighbour.  Within a while they were both at mum’s hugging her, offering their condolences in person.

By this time, the media had been informed and it was scrolling along the bottom on the Sky News channel.  This is when we found out that he had been shot.  This may be a surprise to some of you, but this came as a huge relief to us.  We knew (hoped) that it would’ve been a quick death.  As it turned out, it was and he was declared dead before he got back to Bastion, and I believe they weren’t too far away.  Jonathan’s biggest fear was being blown up and coming home alive without his legs.  He always said “If I can’t ride my bike Mum, then I don’t want to be here”.  This may sound ridiculous or ungrateful, especially as there have been huge improvements in getting people’s lives (almost) back to normal as amputees, but to him this wouldn’t have been the life he wanted.

Finding out how he died from the news wasn’t the best way, but we were just pleased to finally know.  We weren’t being visited by the welfare team until 2pm and so in the meantime, we all went to visit an elderly relative to inform her of the news.  We felt due to her age that we needed to tell her in person.  It was good to get out of the house and have something to do.

The welfare team consisted of a Padre, a welfare officer and our visiting officer.  None of them were the guys from the previous night.  Their role was simply to pass on the bad news.  One of the first things we asked was if anyone else was killed/injured.  We wanted to know if there was another family out there going through the same thing as us.  It turned out someone had been shot in the leg and they had been flown to Selly Oak Hospital, but no one else had been killed.  We asked them to pass a message onto the soldier and his family, to say we were thinking of them and hoped all was well.  However, they didn’t tell us that an Afghan national (the interpreter) had been injured.  We didn’t find out until a couple of weeks later, which was such a shame.  I’m not sure if they simply didn’t know, or that they felt it wasn’t important.  It was to us, and we were sorry to hear that someone else was involved.  Thankfully, he recovered well and soon returned to work.

It turned out he died at 4.30pm our time.  Within an hour and a half, Lisa, his wife had been informed.  I think that’s pretty quick, considering.  I don’t what the protocol is when a situation like this happens, but knowing the Army it won’t be a half-arsed process.  The only thing that was worrying is that they didn’t know about Oliver and Megan.  They’re the children from my brother’s previous marriage and they didn’t know anything about them.  No visiting officer had been dispatched to inform them and so Lisa had to ring their mum and inform her that the father of her children had been killed.  Not something I’d wish on anyone.

One thing we struggled with was keeping the information off Facebook.  A close friend had already passed on their condolences to me via my wall.  I thanked them via a comment, then promptly removed it.  People started messaging me, asking if others could get in contact.  I simply asked that they keep it off my wall and not putting anything about it on their statuses just yet.  Although we had informed all the family, my uncle wanted to wait until that evening to break the news to my cousins.  One had a job interview that day and the other had her first day of Uni.  They wanted them to be able to get on with their days without it hanging over them.  The last thing we needed is for them to find out via Facebook.  Facebook is a great tool, but it can help spread news like wildfire, and this is not what we wanted.

Personally, I didn’t put anything on Facebook until after the MOD officially released it on the Friday.  It was postponed slightly, as news broke about the tragedy with the Welsh miners and they didn’t want it to clash.  When it finally broke, I posted a lovely picture of Jonathan looking happy and relaxed, with the following words:

To some people this will be just another number, another name. So here’s some more numbers:
381 – the number of UK service men and women killed in the Afghan conflict since 2001;
25048995 – his service number;
33 – his age;
15 – the number of years he was in the army;
3 – the number of children he leaves behind;
10 – number of months he’s been married.
Plus the countless number of lives he protected and inspired.
And now a name – Jonathan James McKinlay. My brother, the soldier. Killed 14th Sept 2011 in Afghanistan. So very proud of you and missing you terribly already xxx

Welcome to my blog

So, I’ve decided to write a blog. I’ve attempted several blogs in the past, thinking that I’d be diligent enough to write about my life and my opinions but found it all too easy to give up. I never really promoted them, probably knowing that I wouldn’t stick to it. I had an idea that they’d be more like diaries than anything, but I’ve realised that they don’t have to be about the things that are currently going on in your life. They can be about things that have already happened. And this is why I’ve decided to start again and try to stick to it this time. In the past couple of months my life has been turned upside down. It’s not the first time that it’s happened, but I believe this one will have more of an effect on me than the other events in my life.

So, why start again now?  Well, on 14th September 2011, my brother, LCpl Jonathan James McKinlay, was killed in Afghanistan.

I’ve thought back to that day so many times. What I was doing when he was shot; what was Dan (my b/f) doing when he was shot. What was my mum, his wife and children doing… It so it goes on and on.

I suppose was very naive to think he would come back safely. I hoped that if I acted the same way I did when he went out to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2009, then all would be well. How wrong I was. I didn’t overly worry about him, not like mum. I think she would wake up everyday and her first thought would be him. I would ‘see’ him occasionally on Facebook, or hear about what he was doing through talking with mum. I didn’t go and visit him in camp before he left for Afghan, like mum did. I had never done that before, and felt that I would jinx it somehow if I went this time. In a way I regret going to see him, but also pleased that they had that time together on their own.

He deployed to Afghanistan for the second time in June, after completing a mortar controller course.  The other lads had been been out there since May and he was keen to join them.  He wasn’t brilliant at school, but he thrived when he joined the army, finding a thirst for knowledge and succeeding very well.  The Army was his dream job and I couldn’t see him doing anything else.  He loved his job and we’re all very proud of him.

Jonathan, or JJ as we knew him, was 33 years old when he was killed and leaves behind a wife of 10 months and 3 lovely (and very brave) children.  He joined the Devon and Dorset Regiment 15 years ago, which was amalgamated into the 1st Battilion, The Rifles in 2007.

Swift and Bold  |  Semper Fidelis

Read the MOD press release here