[Targan]

Being antipodean, the men on both sides of my family fought in Africa and the Pacific.

My great great uncle on my Dad's side joined up with an Australian colonial unit during the Boer War. Two weeks after arriving in South Africa, first combat patrol, copped a bullet to the temple.

His nephew, my grandfather, was exempt from service (a police officer and married with kids) but he joined the New Zealand Army during WWII anyway. He joined as an enlisted soldier, but was quickly granted a field commission. At first he was Transport Corps, but ended up commanding a company of Bren Carriers as an infantry captain. He fought at El Alamein in North Africa, and then on Crete. His war ended when a Wehrmacht bullet shot off half his moustache, but he recovered well with only a modest scar to show for it, and went back to police service after the war. He ended his career as the Commissioner of Police in Fiji.

Mum's grandfather was an Aussie ANZAC, serving in a Field Ambulance unit. He was a stretcher bearer at Gallipoli. The war horrified him so greatly he became a priest after WWI and moved to New Zealand. I was baptised in the church he built with his own hands.

My Mum's uncle was a New Zealander but served in the RAF during WWII. He was posted to Singapore, and when the garrison surrendered to the Japanese he wasn't interested in being a prisoner of war, so he joined a group of Australians in borrowing a fishing vessel and heading for Darwin. They stopped at a small, remote island in the Indonesian Archipelago, seeking food and water. Unfortunately there was a misunderstanding with the locals and they killed him.

Dad was an NZAF aircraft mechanic during the Vietnam War. He served on an airbase in Thailand.