Portraits of the Fallen. See more by clicking on the photo.
Ray Furlong writes: "Tonight we're hearing from Michael Reagan, a Vietnam war veteran who has set himself the daunting task of drawing a portrait of every Allied soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I stumbled across Michael's work just before Christmas in a living room in South Shields.
I was interviewing Elsie Manning, the mother of Sharron Elliott, a British soldier killed in Iraq three years ago, ambushed in a patrol boat on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway, when I noticed Sharron's portrait on the wall. She told me it was from an artist in America who was providing these portraits for free to the families of fallen troops.
'I think it's fantastic,' Elsie said, 'he told me he felt Sharron was with him while he was drawing it.' I've been in email contact with other families who have received portraits and they've said similar things. Michael's got lots of stories on tonight's PM, and also shares with us the song he likes to listen to while he's at work: it's called 'In Heaven,' by Country and Western singer Suzy Bogguss, who very kindly waved her copyright so that we could include a blast of it in the report."
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