Gunner Flann

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Welcome to Gunner Flann – A National Service Memoir

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Creating the National Service Memoir Long ago

When John Flann began his National Service in 1949, was assigned to the Royal Artillery and posted to Hong Kong, the furthest thing from his mind was writing a book, a National Service memoir. Back then writing a book meant producing a manuscript for a publishing house to convert to a paper product offered in bookstores. Nor could he dream of the day that self-publishing at little or no cost would become possible through the advent of the Internet and simple content management systems like WordPress. But he could be be a faithful son, keeping his father – for his mother had died in 1946 when he was sixteen – informed of his life by dutifully writing letters home. And he did so, on average one a week for the two years of National Service.

Rediscovering the National Service Letters

His father, Sionna died in 1966, and when  he along with his sisters, settled his father’s estate  the letters sent so long ago returned to him, neatly kept in order, obviously treasured. Retirement in the United States, afforded some time to review and reacquaint John Flann with a significant part of his life, National Service. Convinced that the story of personal development within the history of service in the British Commonwealth’s furthest outpost Hong Kong would have interest to others, He set about converting these personal letters full of news into an orderly account for his family, his two sons, and posterity.

Genesis of Gunner Flann

After some early resistance, framed in the classical English refrain that time spent on a computer indoors was wasted when you could be outside breathing good, clean air and enjoying the sunshine, John Flann started to use a computer and the Internet at the ripe old age of 72. By 82, he had mastered publishing through WordPress, and worked on a site devoted to his life long love, model railways, Hintock Branch. Stretching out from modeling, he made the intellectual and emotional transition to being comfortable writing and publishing something more personal about his life, his time of National Service, and Gunner Flann was born. Here is hoping you enjoy reading it half as much as he enjoyed creating it.

How to Write a Memoir: Creative Devices

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In thinking about the personal account of my National Service , and how to tell that story in way that might interest readers, I wanted to find a way to present it beyond retelling a linear path over time. All stories have a beginning, middle and end, but a story can bore the reader or compel them to move on to the next section in eager anticipation. While I am not suggesting, my contribution reads like the latest novel that is a top seller, I wanted to specifically share a device that I think helps my tale. Before telling you about it, I would like to show it to you.

Gunner Flann in the beginning and at the end of his National Service in the Royal Artillery.

Before and After National Service in the Royal Artillery.

These two pictures helped me think about how I wanted to tell my story. Simply looking at them drove home to me how I had changed in the two years of my National Service, in the Royal Artillery. In this image where the before photograph and the after photograph are part of the same image next to each other, I cannot escape the sense of youth and expectancy in the beginning, nor can I fail to see the confident young man I had become two years later.

It struck me that these pictures could serve literal bookends to my story. These pictures feature in my Foreword and my End. My job became not to relate in some hum drum fashion everything that happened between over a period of time as if I was cataloging stationery, but to come to grips with how I changed and why and try to explain that within the context of my National Service. I would like to think that I have been successful, but of course others will be the judge of that, just like reviewers provide an opinion on a book or film.

But regardless of whether you think I have been successful or not, I would counsel developing your own device to tell your story if you are considering a personal memoir, particularly one about National Service.

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