WE WILL REMEMBER THEM
If remembrance is the act of looking back, then reconciliation is what helps us move forward. Together, they form the full circle of healing - honouring the past while making peace with it. Will Kevans, a former Welsh Guardsman, bridges those two ideas beautifully through his art, turning memory into something living, breathing, and profoundly human.
Will Kevans – The Art of Reconciliation
Will served from 1980 to 1985, including during the Falklands Conflict. Like so many young men of his generation, he joined the military with enthusiasm and a sense of adventure - eager to see the world, to belong to something bigger than himself. But war has a way of changing that energy into something quieter, heavier, more reflective. The boy who went to the Falklands came home as a man who had seen both courage and heartbreak up close.
During the long, uncertain days of deployment, Will found solace in sketching. Pencil and paper became his escape. While others wrote letters or played cards, Will drew. He captured the still moments between the chaos, comrades, the landscapes that surrounded them - fragments of calm in a world that felt anything but. Those sketches became the first steps in a lifelong journey of expression and recovery.
Will’s creative journey also took form in his graphic novel, “My Life In Pieces”, which vividly details his combat experience. The work, now part of the Imperial War Museum collection, captures the rawness and reality of war through Will’s own eyes - a testament to how storytelling and art can carry the weight of memory with both honesty and hope.
His coin design for Remembrance 2025 channels that same spirit of healing. At its centre, two hands clasp in a handshake, bound in barbed wire - a stark and moving symbol of peace forged through pain. It acknowledges the sharpness of history while daring to imagine a gentler future. In the background, a soldier sketches on the battlefield - an image lifted from one of Will’s real wartime drawings - connecting his personal act of coping to the wider story of remembrance shared by so many veterans. Every line of the design speaks about resilience, empathy, and the belief that creativity can transform even the harshest memories into something meaningful.
Beyond the coin itself lies a story that defines Will’s legacy: his reconciliation with Argentine veterans of the Falklands. In the years since the conflict, Will has met and formed friendships with men who once stood on the opposite side of the battlefield. Together, they have shared stories, memories, and the kind of quiet understanding that only comes from shared experience. It’s a powerful act of grace - proof that remembrance, when paired with compassion, can mend even the deepest divides.
His message is both simple and profound:
“Remembrance is something we should live and remember every day, not just a ceremony once a year.”
To Will, remembrance is not a performance of grief or pride; it’s a daily practice of empathy. It’s about living in a way that honours those who came before - by choosing understanding over division, kindness over bitterness. His design captures that philosophy: that remembrance doesn’t belong in the past; it belongs in how we treat one another now.
Through Will’s perspective, remembrance stops being static - it evolves, like the people who carry it; it becomes art, peace, and mutual understanding - a bridge between generations, nations, and hearts. His story reminds us that the greatest tribute to those lost in conflict is not silence alone, but connection, creativity and compassion.
His journey of reconciliation continues. In January 2026, Will is set to take part in a reconciliation climb of Aconcagua - the highest peak in the Andes outside the Himalayas - sponsored by Invictus. He’ll make the ascent alongside both British and Argentine Falklands veterans, turning the mountain into a living symbol of endurance, unity, and forgiveness. The climb isn’t just physical; it’s a continuation of the same inner ascent he began decades ago through art - pushing toward perspective, peace, and shared humanity.
Remembrance Day 2025
Across these five stories - from Pauline’s sense of family and community, Simon’s enduring camaraderie, Mike’s generational lineage, Stephen’s solemn grief, and Will’s reconciliation and hope - one truth shines through: Remembrance is a living promise.
It’s how a nation holds space for the past while shaping its future. It’s why, each November, people gather in city squares and on village greens, poppies pinned to their hearts, to honour not just the silence, but the stories it protects.
For those who served and those who never came home; for those who waited, who kept the hearth burning, who held memory close when the world moved on - we remember.
And through art, design and storytelling, remembrance continues to breathe - it lives in the hands that create, the voices that retell, and the hearts that refuse to forget. It endures - not just in history, but in humanity itself.
