I was born in Brisbane and grew up in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. After finishing schooling and realising that university was not for me, I got a job in a clothing store for a couple of years. I was walking down the Mall one day when all of a sudden I was bitten by the travel bug.

At the beginning of 1993 I left for England with the thought of spending a couple of years in England to do the backpacker thing. All was going well when I read an article in a magazine, while sitting in a youth hostel in London, asking for volunteers to go to Croatia for a month as a civilian aid-worker. What followed was a month that changed every part of me, from the way I spoke to the way I acted. It was the greatest experience of my life.

I didn't spend that two years in Europe, it turned into three and a half. I met my wife in a pub in London, got engaged in Amsterdam and married in Hawaii in May 1996. We returned to Australia shortly after the wedding where we still live with two children and a cat.

I needed a change in direction a few years back and came to the conclusion that if I was ever going to experience anything like that month in Croatia, and get paid for it, then the Australian Army was the way to go. After seven and a half years I'm still in and have served in the Solomon Islands and completed two tours of East Timor.

I am a militaria freak and self-taught military historian and have traveled through the battle fields of the Western Front, Guadalcanal, and Hawaii. I have branched off to an aspect not many go for. The personal side to war, who were the men and women who have given their lives for the freedoms we take for granted? Why are their names so hard to find?

Whether we agree or disagree about a war is not and should not detract from the fact that our soldiers deserve our support where ever they fight.

I write this on the day that Australia lost its first soldier to the war in Iraq. It had taken 964 days with the deployment of thousands of Aussie's for the first to fall. On a headstone of an Australian burried on Gallipoli is an epitaph that reads, 'ONE CROWDED HOUR OF GLORIOUS LIFE IS WORTH AN AGE WITHOUT A NAME.'

Cheers

Andy.

Last Updated Wednesday, January 11 2006 @ 06:29 AM EST