I drove eighteen hours in an old truck to watch my daughter get her commission, and a woman moved me to the back row. Then a three-star general stopped mid-sentence and stared at the strap on my wrist.

My knee went when I came down out of the cab, which it does. I straightened the blue flannel I had ironed in the bunk at a truck stop outside Harlow at four in the morning, and I touched the strap on my right wrist, the way I do.

To anybody else it is a bit of cracked leather that should have been thrown out in about 2009.

“Dad!”

Edie came across that tarmac in full dress uniform, and in fifty minutes my daughter was going to be a second lieutenant.

“You made it.”

“Course I did.”

She stood back and looked at my face. “You drove all night.”

“Truck’s still going.”