What was it like trying to maintain a relationship whilst in the army?
When we first met I was going through my training and therefore she had an idea of what the job was all about but a very rough idea. And you don't expect someone to have that intensity, that level of intensity, when it come to operations. Dealing with bombs is one thing -- getting shot during an ambush is an entirely different thing. But also the whole emotional side as well, it doesn't matter how hard you try. EOD, Explosive Ordinance Disposal, is also known as Everyone's Divorced. I think part of that problem is the sort of emotional detachment and the fact that you can't just phone up or Lucy could never phone me. There was no way of just phoning me up. So if there is a drama or a problem those people we leave behind just have to deal with it and don't get to bounce the idea off their nearest and dearest or their husband or wife. So that's hard in itself. The other problem, of course, is that when you have a phone call you might have twenty minutes if you're lucky. Invariably, you queue for an hour and find that the person's not in or something like that. But there is only so much information you can get across in twenty minutes and it almost becomes a briefing where you tell each other the important things, what bills need paying or where do I find xyz in the house, because I have lost it or mislaid it, I need to know, I need to pay this bill. And then yeah by the way how are you? Yeah not bad. Beep beep beep. That's the end of the call and you don't actually talk about any of the really important stuff, on both sides. And then we got, when I got back home it took quite a long time to get to know one another again and to get used to being in the same house and living together again and loving each other again.
