Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that January 18 is the anniversary of the birth of British Army intelligence officer in WWI and later English author Alan Alexander Milne best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems.
I was raised to love the Winnie the Pooh stories and read them to my own sons when they were young - Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and piglet were wonderful characters.
For some reason the message on this post showed up in my inbox on February 4, 2018.
Rest in peace A. A. Milne

The creator of "Winnie-The-Pooh" reading some of his own work in a 1929 recording.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sr3-541IIw

Images:
1. Alan Alexander Milne with his son Christopher Robin
2. Christopher Robin with mum Daphne
3. Alexander Alan Milne in uniform as a British Army intelligence officer during WWI
4. Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and the son of Roux, the Tiger - were also copied from Christopher's favorite toys. They are currently kept at the New York Public Library. Missing is Roo, who was lost when Christopher Robin was very young.

Biographies
1. fantasybookreview.co.uk/AA-Milne/biography.html
2. internetpoem.com/alan-alexander-milne/biography/

1. Background from fantasybookreview.co.uk/AA-Milne/biography.html
"Alan Alexander Milne was born on January 18, 1882. Growing up in London, Milne attended Henley House, a private school run by his father. By 1893, soon after leaving Henley House, Milne found himself studying at Westminster School and later, in 1903, obtaining a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University.

Often thought of as merely an author of children's novels, Milne was a poet, an essayist, a playwright, and an adult novelist as well. He began his writing career with humorous pieces for Punch magazine. It was in this publication, in 1923, that Winnie-the-Pooh made his first appearance in the poem Teddy Bear. Milne also wrote plays and by the time When We Were Very Young, his first book of poems for children, was published in 1924; he had already made his name as a dramatist and novelist.

In 1913, Milne married Dorothy DeSelincourt, the owner of Punch's goddaughter. Soon after they were married, on February 10, 1915, Milne joined the army as a signaling officer. While in the army, Milne wrote his first play, Wurzel Flummery.

As a married couple, Milne and DeSelincourt were simply comrades. DeSelincourt was described as 'an unattractive portrait of an extravagant social butterfly, glad to get her only child packed off to boarding school and eventually unfaithful to her patient, loving husband'. Together, they believed friendship was the most important part to a marriage. Later, Milne displayed his belief in the importance of friendship in The House at Pooh Corner through Pooh's friendship with Piglet.

E.H. Shepard, born in 1879, became known as the ‘Man who drew Pooh’, but was also an acclaimed artist in his own right. Shepard won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Arts, and later, like Milne, worked for Punch magazine as a cartoonist and an illustrator. Shepard’s illustrations of Winnie-the-Pooh and the friends of the Hundred Acre Wood have become classics in their own right and are recognised all over the world."

2. Background from internetpoem.com/alan-alexander-milne/biography/
Biography of Alan Alexander Milne
Alan Alexander Milne (/mɪln/; 18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was a British author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and was a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.

Born Alan Alexander Milne
(1882-01-18)18 January 1882
Kilburn, London, England
Died 31 January 1956(1956-01-31) (aged 74)
Hartfield, Sussex, England
Occupation Novelist, playwright, poet
Nationality British
Alma mater Trinity College, Cambridge
Period Edwardian era
Genre Children's literature
Notable works Winnie-the-Pooh
Military career
Allegiance United Kingdom
Service/branch British Army
British Home Guard
Years of service 1915–1920
1939–1945
Rank Captain
Battles/wars First World War
Second World War
Spouse Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt (m. 1913)
Children Christopher Robin Milne

lan Alexander Milne was born in Kilburn, London to parents John Vine Milne, who was born in Jamaica, and Sarah Marie Milne (née Heginbotham) and grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells, who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied on a mathematics scholarship, graduating with a B.A. in Mathematics in 1903. He edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor. Considered a talented cricket fielder, Milne played for two amateur teams that were largely composed of British writers: the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI. His teammates included fellow writers J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse.

Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was commissioned into the 4th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 1 February 1915 as a second lieutenant (on probation). His commission was confirmed on 20 December 1915. On 7 July 1916, he was injured while serving in the Battle of the Somme and invalided back to England. Having recuperated, he was recruited into Military Intelligence to write propaganda articles for MI7 (b) between 1916 and 1918. He was discharged on 14 February 1919, and settled in Mallord Street, Chelsea. He relinquished his commission on 19 February 1920, retaining the rank of lieutenant.

After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of fellow English writer (and Authors XI cricket teammate) P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend (e.g., in The Mating Season) by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."

Milne married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913 and their son Christopher Robin Milne was born in 1920. In 1925, Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex.

During World War II, Milne was Captain of the British Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain "Mr. Milne" to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid, and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted." Milne died in January 1956, aged 74.

Literary career
1903 to 1925
After graduating from Cambridge College in 1903, A. A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to Punch, joining the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor.
During this period he published 18 plays and three novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery (1922). His son was born in August 1920 and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children's poems, When We Were Very Young, which were illustrated by Punch staff cartoonist E. H. Shepard. A collection of short stories for children A Gallery of Children, and other stories that became part of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, were first published in 1925.
Milne was an early screenwriter for the nascent British film industry, writing four stories filmed in 1920 for the company Minerva Films (founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard and his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel). These were The Bump, starring Aubrey Smith; Twice Two; Five Pound Reward; and Bookworms. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute. Milne had met Howard when the actor starred in Milne's play Mr Pim Passes By in London.
Looking back on this period (in 1926), Milne observed that when he told his agent that he was going to write a detective story, he was told that what the country wanted from a "Punch humorist" was a humorous story; when two years later he said he was writing nursery rhymes, his agent and publisher were convinced he should write another detective story; and after another two years, he was being told that writing a detective story would be in the worst of taste given the demand for children's books. He concluded that "the only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others."

1926 to 1928
Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne, and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals, most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed bear, originally named "Edward," was renamed "Winnie" after a Canadian black bear named Winnie (after Winnipeg), which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to London Zoo during the war. "The pooh" comes from a swan the young Milne named "Pooh." E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son's teddy, Growler ("a magnificent bear"), as the model. The rest of Christopher Robin Milne's toys, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger, were incorporated into A. A. Milne's stories, and two more characters – Rabbit and Owl – were created by Milne's imagination. Christopher Robin Milne's own toys are now on display in New York where 750,000 people visit them every year.
The fictional Hundred Acre Wood of the Pooh stories derives from Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, South East England, where the Pooh stories were set. Milne lived on the northern edge of the forest at Cotchford Farm, 51°05′24″N 0°06′25″E / 51.090°N 0.107°E / 51.090; 0.107, and took his son walking there. E. H. Shepard drew on the landscapes of Ashdown Forest as inspiration for many of the illustrations he provided for the Pooh books. The adult Christopher Robin commented: "Pooh's Forest and Ashdown Forest are identical." Popular tourist locations at Ashdown Forest include: Galleon's Lap, The Enchanted Place, the Heffalump Trap and Lone Pine, Eeyore’s Sad and Gloomy Place, and the wooden Pooh Bridge where Pooh and Piglet invented Poohsticks.
Not yet known as Pooh, he made his first appearance in a poem, "Teddy Bear," published in Punch magazine in February 1924 and republished in When We Were Very Young. Pooh first appeared in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve, 1925, in a story called "The Wrong Sort Of Bees." Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926, followed by The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. A second collection of nursery rhymes, Now We Are Six, was published in 1927. All four books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Milne also published four plays in this period. He also "gallantly stepped forward" to contribute a quarter of the costs of dramatising P. G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress. The World of Pooh won the Lewis

1929 onwards
The success of his children's books was to become a source of considerable annoyance to Milne, whose self-avowed aim was to write whatever he pleased and who had, until then, found a ready audience for each change of direction: he had freed pre-war Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright (like his idol J. M. Barrie) on both sides of the Atlantic; he had produced a witty piece of detective writing in The Red House Mystery (although this was severely criticised by Raymond Chandler for the implausibility of its plot). But once Milne had, in his own words, "said goodbye to all that in 70,000 words" (the approximate length of his four principal children's books), he had no intention of producing any reworkings lacking in originality, given that one of the sources of inspiration, his son, was growing older.
Another reason Milne stopped writing children's books, and especially about Winnie-the-Pooh, was that he felt "amazement and disgust" over the fame his son was exposed to, and said that "I feel that the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him. I do not want CR Milne to ever wish that his name were Charles Robert."
In his literary home, Punch, where the When We Were Very Young verses had first appeared, Methuen continued to publish whatever Milne wrote, including the long poem "The Norman Church" and an assembly of articles entitled Year In, Year Out (which Milne likened to a benefit night for the author).
In 1930, Milne adapted Kenneth Grahame's novel The Wind in the Willows for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall. The title was an implicit admission that such chapters as Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," could not survive translation to the theatre. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame's novel.
Milne and his wife became estranged from their son, who came to resent what he saw as his father's exploitation of his childhood and came to hate the books that had thrust him into the public eye. Marrying his first cousin, Lesley de Sélincourt, distanced Christopher still further from his parents – Lesley's father and Christopher's mother hadn't spoken to each other for 30 years."

FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen LTC Greg Henning LTC Jeff Shearer Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price CPT Scott Sharon CWO3 Dennis M. SSG William Jones SGT (Join to see) SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO2 Kevin Parker PO3 Bob McCord LTC (Join to see)SGT Jim Arnold Maj Robert Thornton Cynthia Croft

BTW, a well done film, IMO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Christopher_Robin

Good morning Marty. Thanks for the great post.