'Little hero' four-year-old Alnwick boy wins national bravery award for resilience in lockdown

Alfie Neale’s dad serves in the Royal Air Force and was deployed overseas in September and is not due back until March.

The deployment coincided with Alfie’s mum returning to work full-time as a teacher while Alfie and his younger brother, George, started a new nursery.

Alfie has been named ‘Little Trooper of the Month’ by military children’s charity, Little Troopers, after he was nominated by his mum for coping well with so much change and for celebrating his birthday and Christmas without seeing his dad or any extended family or friends.

Alfie will receive a Little Troopers medal, certificate and special prize as part of his award.

His mum, Katie, said: “Every day Alfie asks if the Prime Minister had changed his mind yet and if he can step out of his ‘bubble’ but he goes to nursery every day without a fuss whilst I go to work.

"Every night he hopes that daddy will soon be home and he is always talking about things he wants to do when he sees daddy again. We’ve had some tricky moments along the way, lots of tears and ‘whys?!’ but he has done amazingly well and I couldn’t be more proud of him. He is always my little hero!”

Louise Fetigan, founder of Little Troopers, said: “All the changes that Alfie has been through would have been tricky enough for any child under normal circumstances but the Covid restrictions have put lots of added pressure onto military families like Alfie’s who have faced deployed alongside separation from their extended families.

"We think Alfie deserves to know what a special Little Trooper he is and we hope this award will make him feel proud and give him something to look forward to sharing and talking about with his Dad when they are reunited.”

Little Troopers is a registered charity supporting children who have parents serving in the British Armed Forces. The charity runs a number of initiatives including the Little Troopers Treasures story recording app, which enables military parents to record themselves reading stories to their children to watch while they are away. For more information visit www.littletroopers.net

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