‘Remembrance Sunday shows me that the world is as proud of my dad as I am’

Give to our 2026 Christmas Charity Appeal In many ways, 16-year-old Kiki Tautz is just like many other teenage girls – she likes fashion, shopping, hanging out with her friends and taking occasional trips to Thorpe Park. But in other ways, Kiki’s day-to-day life is unimaginable. Kiki’s father, Ian, is in active service in the RAF – currently, he’s in the Falklands – and for five out of every 18 months since she was born, he’s been deployed abroad.

“Most of my friends don’t have parents in the military,” the teenager says when we speak on the telephone from her home in Hampshire. “They don’t really understand what it is like to not have had my father here for five of my birthdays and three Christmases and to miss him at the normal everyday events that many people just take for granted. It’s the little things I notice. When we look through photos of us as a family, there are far fewer pictures of Mum and I actually with Dad, because he’s often not here.”

Someone who does understand the specific poignancy Kiki describes is Bryley, Kiki’s mother, who joins us on the call. Not only was she a former RAF servicewoman herself (she now works for an aviation company) but Bryley, 43, is also the child of a serviceman – her own father was in the Royal Marines for 27 years and fought in the first Gulf War. “Ian was deployed for Kiki’s first Christmas,” Bryley says. “Service is a huge part of who my family is and what is important to us, and it’s also why Remembrance means a lot to us.

For Kiki and I and other military families, Remembrance is a living thing, it’s not only about memorialising and reflecting on those who gave their lives in wars long ago, but also to spare a thought for and reflect on the people currently serving and their friends and family left behind, all of whom make sacrifices every day.” Bryley speaks from experience. Attending a local Remembrance event is one of the most important days on the family’s calendar and Kiki has previously been chosen to lay a wreath at a local war memorial.

“That made me feel such pride, but also sadness for people’s loss,” Kiki says. “The families of service people are always remembering and living with the sacrifices those in the forces have to make, but it’s meaningful when others also join in to come together and pay tribute to them, the men and women who leave their loved ones behind to fight and protect the country.” While Kiki says she couldn’t imagine her life any differently, being the child of a person on active deployment has brought with it emotional challenges.

“When I was nine and my father was sent to Afghanistan, I started getting very anxious. It’s strange going from a situation where he is home all the time to then not seeing him for months on end and I developed a lot of separation anxiety about his being away,” she says. “It was coming up to Christmas and I missed him, and that’s when I became involved with Little Troopers .” Founded in 2011, Little Troopers is a registered charity supporting all children with one or both parents serving in the British Armed Forces, whether regular or reserve.

Through therapy, organising excursions, fostering links with other military children and providing educational resources, it helps youngsters facing unique challenges due to their parents’ career choice – whether that’s repeated periods of separation during exercises and operations or frequent moves between homes and schools because of service life. In Kiki’s case, Little Troopers organised a Christmas excursion to Lapland UK alongside children of other service personnel.

“It was amazing and helped at a really difficult time in my life,” says Kiki. “I was struggling with anxiety and it gave me something to look forward to.” Since then, Little Troopers has remained a constant source of support in the background of Kiki’s life, ready to step in and provide help and community when she needs it. It’s something Kiki’s mother Bryley understands only too well. While she says she and Ian try to shield Kiki from much of the talk of impending global peril that punctuates the news these days – wars, civil unrest, political turmoil and threats of attack – Bryley admits that a career in the services can be, by its nature, emotionally uncertain for families.

“As a service child myself, I understand a lot of the emotions Kiki feels and has felt,” Bryley explains. “I also suffered anxiety when I was young and my father was away, but then we didn’t have an organisation like Little Troopers. They really do amazing work.” Kiki and Bryley are also very keen to focus on what their family of three does have, rather than what they are sometimes missing. Their mother-daughter bond is extremely strong, says the pair.

“We have to rely on each other quite a lot,” says Kiki. “When [Ian is] away, it’s just us, so we do spend a lot of time together watching shows or doing simple everyday stuff.” Bryley, too, says that she feels “blessed” to be able to have so much time one-on-one with her daughter. Nevertheless, “I so look forward to my father coming home,” says Kiki. “Some of my favourite memories are of travelling to the base to pick him up after he comes back from deployment.

I love paddleboarding and so does he, so we spend time doing that when we can.” While Ian is away, modern technology – mobile phones, email and video-calling – has made it much easier for the family to stay in touch, too. “He’s good like that,” says Bryley, “and he always makes an effort to prepare in advance for things like a birthday or Christmas if he’s going to miss it by buying gifts and leaving them here for us. He really makes an effort.”

On Father’s Day in 2023, the pair decided to surprise Ian by flying out to Cyprus, where he was deployed, to spend a week with him. “He was completely taken aback and so happy,” recalls Kiki. “It was so good to be able to spend a week out there with him. That trip is one of my favourite memories.” Despite all of the hardship and separation the family endures, Kiki is adamant she wouldn’t want it any other way. She does admit, though, despite her father’s joking encouragement for her to follow in his footsteps, a career in the military is not for her: she has a rather more glamorous job in mind.

It does involve travelling and definitely necessitates good sea legs, but Kiki’s not got her sights set on the Navy, but instead on working aboard super yachts . “While I have the utmost respect for it, life in the military is not for me,” she explains, but continues that while it brings its challenges, she wouldn’t change a thing about what her father does. “I don’t wish that he had a different career,” she says, “because I am really, really proud of him.

That’s the nice thing about Remembrance Day too, it shows how proud others are of him too.” This year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal is supporting four charities: Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, Kidney Research UK, Missing People and Little Troopers. To donate, please visit telegraph.co.uk/appeal2026 or call 0151 317 5247