‘I will be at the Cenotaph to pay my respects on the day’ It’s important to remember the sacrifices that people made back then and recently
David Potts (31), a delivery driver, toured Iraq and Afghanistan with the Army. He and his wife Natalie live in Belfast. He says:
Ijoined the Irish Guards regiment of the Army as a school leaver in 2003. It was really my only option at the time because I didn’t believe I had any other prospects — I’m from the Shankill Road and I would have ended up on the street.
I did my first tour of Iraq when I was 19 and then another in 2007, and I toured Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011. I left the Army in 2013.
I felt that I’d served long enough, and I wanted to come back home and settle down. I had a girlfriend at the time — she’s now my wife.
We could have got married and she could have become an Army wife with quarters in England but she was having none of it.
Leaving was a bit of an adjustment, trying to get used to being back on civvy street. I was quite lucky in that I had a job lined up so I was able to go straight into that but a day’s work in civvy street is different to a day’s work in the Army. I would say it took me about a year to settle in properly.
If I hadn’t joined the Army I wouldn’t be the man I am today. It gave me basic life skills, taught me how to deal with people and to work as a team. I think the skills I got have really set me up for the future. And I made friends for life — I was best man for two of my former colleagues.
For me, Remembrance Day is about the sacrifices that the Army has made over the past 100 years.
I think it’s particularly relevant over these last couple of years because we were in the middle of the First World War a century ago.
It’s really important to remember the sacrifices that people made back then, and also in recent times.
I will never forget the friends that I lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’ll be at the Cenotaph to pay my respects on the day.”
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