My friend Holly Davies, who has died of cancer aged 39, had only half the life that most of us hope for, but managed to achieve twice as much as many of us ever will. In the last year alone she met the prime minister, was awarded the Commendation of the Chief of the Defence Staff, and received the British Empire Medal for her work with the Felix Fund, the charity she set up in 2011 to support bomb disposal experts, and named after Felix, the unofficial mascot of British army bomb disposal.
Her interest in this field began when she worked for the Army Benevolent Fund. In 2009, she met bomb disposal officers recently returned from Afghanistan who admitted that they were struggling to adjust to life back home. Holly set out to raise enough money to pay for therapeutic "normalisation" breaks for them. Her relentless fundraising paid for more than 250 soldiers to receive this benefit.
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