In 2007, the Armed Forces Memorial was unveiled in the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Its sculptures (Ian Rank-Broadley) include the grief-stricken family of a fallen soldier: his wife and son, his distraught mother and stoic father. The representation of bereaved civilian males in commemorative activities and representations is more rare and complex than the attribution of sacrifice, victimhood and patriotism accorded to female relatives, however. This paper examines the marginalization and mobilization of the male, and in particular the father, in public coverage of the casualties of war and more specifically on war memorials from the First World War to the present. It is a theme permeated by constructions of intersecting genders: of the fallen, of those left behind and of the war effort itself within and beyond the war years.