Our Uncle Don was an epic traveller. I used to meet him when I was a boy while he was an engineering salesman, I also used to meet his brother, Uncle Harold, the pilot. Don and my father were both in the Territorial Army, 10th Battalion, Parachute Regiment, we would meet at TA training sessions in barracks around London and the Home Counties where they would tell tales of jumps from all types of aircraft. Don joined the Army aged 18 then joined the TA, my father joined his brother in the Paras as soon as he completed his Royal Navy war service from 1942 and Reserves until 1957. Like Donald, my father loved the military life. They came from a military family, their family came from Barrack Lane, Great Waltham. Don left the Army when about 45, his brother Ray, my father was still in the Paras aged 57. They always had many fascinating tales to tell each other. Don picked up Arabic while in Arabia, my father learnt and spoke Italian while serving 2 years in Taranto naval base in Italy. Their brother Harold spoke German and later learned French. Their sister, Norma was in the RAF serving in an RAF base in Germany and she could get by well in German. Before Don met and married his dear wife, Freda would often see a tall handsome young man singing in Italian while cycling past her house in Baddow Road and up Beehive Lane, Great Baddow. Years later, when Don took his dear Freda home, she met Ray again and realised that her fiancé was the brother of the Italian singer. Don and Freda would take us on trips in their pre war Wolseley. As a boy, I would visit Don and Freda's house where they would have piles of aviation magazines that Harold had left with them for me. I was so inspired with my uncles, aunts, my father and my mother who studied French and German that I did the same, I was delighted to follow Don and the others into high technology engineering which our home county, Essex is famous for. Like Don and our family, I pursued languages, I first learned French and German, then Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. They came in so handy when travelling abroad like Don, selling engineering equipment "Made in Britain". I would often call Don before or after a sales trip to pass on leads or to find out when and where he was going next. During my 30 years of foreign sales trips, I bumped into Donald quite often, about a dozen times. Once he was trying to get a hotel room at my hotel where they had told him "there was no room at the inn", I let him sleep on a spare bed. Another 2 times, he got a room through me. One time, when I arrived, they thought that his booking was for me, they gave me his room, but we got him another. He woke me at 2 in the morning. I was ordered to get dressed and attend parade in the lobby forthwith, then to the bar which was lively with music. We always had such fun together. There was always a smile, a laugh, a cheeky grin on his face, and the tales are so familiar of going abroad so often and for quite long trips or spells abroad and coming home with fantastic gifts, toys, embroidered fabrics and garments, souvenirs and historic artefacts. I would not have missed it and I was inspired and amused by Uncle Donald and by our family. I and and we all miss you Don. Love Glen