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The story so far:

Colour Serjeant Kevin Fortuna of A Company, 1 Rifles, was killed on active service in Afghanistan on 23 May 2011. Kev joined the Army at 16 and died three weeks before his 37th birthday. He was about to be promoted to Company Serjeant Major and had served in Iraq (twice), Afghanistan (twice), Kosovo, the Balkans and Northern Ireland (four times) winning 9 medals for his service to Queen and Country.

As a family we raised £4000 for Help for Heroes in 2011, mainly due to our daughter, Kev's widow, Nia's run in the London Marathon on the day that Kev flew out to Afghanistan for the last time.

In 2012 we looked to better that and set ourselves a target of £10,000. Nia and her friend Louise did a skydive on the first anniversary of Kev's death raising £3268; my wife, Sue, held a summer garden party and hog roast raising £2350; and my son Joe, and his cousins Matt and Dan, cycled 366 miles in 5 days from the Cenotaph in London to Portsmouth, where Kev was born, then to a World War II War Memorial in Bayeux France, where they laid crosses and then back to Kev's graveside in Colchester Cemetery where they again laid crosses in remembrance of Kev. Their challenge raised £5175. By a strange quirk of fate, the lads cycled 366 miles and Kev was the 366th British casualty in Afghanistan.

Additionally, a benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous donated £8000 worth of merchandise, to Chavasse House, the Colchester Recovery Centre, all because of a chance meeting at Liverpool Street underground station where we were stood with our collecting buckets.

Also in 2012, I ran, swam and cycled a 2230 mile triathlon to raise a bit of money too.

In the end, our total funds collected during 2012 reached a staggering £42,369.

On 1 January 2013, my wife Sue and I became Local Coordinators for H4H in Essex, so in addition to running our own events we helped others with theirs.

We started with modest intentions and I can't believe the generosity of everyone around us. We never dreamed of reaching £50k but once we did, we thought we could do it again and by December 2014 we had reached £100k! So, the next target was £250 000.

On 26 April 2015 Nia ran the London Marathon for the second time for H4H and raised £3470.

By 10 March 2019 we had reached the next milestone - £200 000 but due to the reduction in news about the continuing, and sometimes life-long needs of "Our Blokes" after pulling out of Afghanistan, fundraising became harder. In fact, H4H is still helping wounded, sick and injured personnel from the conflicts in The Falklands, Northern Ireland and everywhere else that has seen unrest. You only have to have served for one day to get H4H support for the rest of your life.

2020 and 2021 showed a marked slowdown in our donations totalling only around £10k/year because of Covid, and the resultant increased spread of the contactless society. To try to boost revenue I undertook a virtual climb of Mount Everest going up and down our stairs 100 times a day for a month. Generous people donated over £3k, which helped greatly (please note, I didn't claim for a new stair carpet!).

Things did pick up again in 2022 but donations via collecting tubs in shops, pubs, hairdressers, opticians, personal tubs, etc. reduced by around 75% for the same reason, but we pressed on and are doing the best we can. Now having a contactless machine of our own at bucket collections is certainly helping.

In October 2022 we finally reached our target of raising a quarter of a million pounds and were so grateful to the many many people who helped us along the way. However, "Our Blokes" still need our help so on we plod. We haven't set a new target but in June 2025 we reached £300k.

People ask us if we are going for half a million! but at the current rate of progress that will take another 10 years. By then we will be lucky if we can still stand and point in the right direction with our buckets. No targets, no promises, but onwards and upwards for the foreseeable.

Throughout our activities, Sue Fortuna (Kev's Mum) has been incredibly supportive and regularly turns up at events with bags of money that she has won on the premium bonds, so it's thanks to ERNIE, too.

All along the way, we have had fantastic support from our Colchester Members of Parliament. First, Sir Bob Russell (Lib. Dem), then Will Quince (Con) with whom I worked to get a £2m grant from the government for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to refurbish all of the 5000+ post WWII war graves that were falling into disrepair and not being looked after properly, and also a pro-rata annual grant from the government for the increased number of graves that the CWGC now have to tend on an on-going basis. And now with Professor Pam Cox (Lab) who cares deeply about the support that needs to be provided for our past, present and future Armed Forces personnel, and works strenuously and diligently towards that end.

So a big, big thankyou to everyone who has and continues to support us.