HIS job is not the envy of every of British Army personnel around the world but retired Major Jim Hall is perhaps the most important one of them all.
Major Jim is among the few soldiers in the British Army that have the huge responsibility of informing the spouses, parents and families of the deaths of their beloved ones.
"I wouldn't say I enjoy it but I gain satisfaction from the fact because I am there to help the families grieve and go through their most difficult times together with them as there are more to the deaths of these soldiers like executing their will and organising the return of their equipment. I am there to the end," Major Jim says.
He is posted in Fiji as the British Army Support Officer and during his term, he had the arduous job of informing five different families of the deaths of their beloved son, brother, father and uncle.
British Army soldiers of Fijian descent are among the casualties in the recent Afghanistan and Iraqi wars and in the past 10 years a total of 13 soldiers have died — four in Iraq and nine in Afghan.
Apart from these fatalities, there were others who were injured while on duty and all these are part and parcel of Major Jim's work — to inform their families of their condition and progress.
"It is also letting the soldiers back in the United Kingdom know that there is mom and dad here back home.
"I try to keep the link together," Major Jim says.
Death and grief is part and parcel of almost every soldier's life and Major Jim was not spared from this as he too had lost a very close army friend.
"Losing a friend is the worst moment of my soldiering career and he was a very close friend of mine and even though he was killed in a freak training accident, the loss is just the same.
"I was the one who had the task of informing his wife," he says.
The Nottinghamshire native first enlisted into the Army in 1973, just a year after British Special Forces Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba spawned one of the modern legends of Her Majesty Army with a brave stand in the battle of Mirbat in Oman.
"I didn't meet him but have read up on him because I joined the army after he lost his own life but saving many others.
"But my first contact with a Fijian soldier was towards the end of my career in 2002 in Scotland.
"I can't recall the name of that soldier but I know he was in the Royal Scots because their barracks was next to my regiment.
"My first and always my impression of Fijians as soldiers is that they are excellent soldiers and they're born warriors — they settle in well and quickly into soldiering," Major Jim says.
Jim only enlisted in the army because it was one of the two choices of employment available to him after he left school. The other was to work in the mines.
"I had military traditions on both sides of my family and it did not take long for me to decide," he says.
After graduating from basic training in 1974, the then Private Jim was posted to a one-year tour of duty in West Germany.
The Berlin Wall had not fallen and Europe was still in the grips of the Cold War with East and West Germany at the very centre of it all.
"There were many exercises in preparing for the Russians in crossing over, we were preparing for a possible invasion," he says.
But Jim only saw action in Northern Ireland where he was transferred to in 1975.
Northern Ireland was the hotbed of the Irish nationalist movement at the time and their struggle was led by the Irish Republican Army or the IRA.
He spent 13 years in Northern Ireland and unfortunately his work description there still remains classified up to this day.