The old postcard

 


This photograph was taken in 1917 in Mildura and shows William Matthews (Goode), Mary Elizabeth Matthews (my grandmother), and her grandmother, Clara Marsh. It is battered and folded and has had a hard life, much like the people it depicts.

William Matthews enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and had this photo taken with his mother and niece before leaving for the Western Front in France. He carried it with him, a small piece of home amidst the horrors of war. Tragically, he was shot but survived, and the photograph was lost on the battlefield. The stain above Clara’s head is supposed to be his blood.

In a remarkable twist of fate, Les Pope, a fellow soldier from Mildura who recognised the faces, picked up the photo from the mud and returned it to the family. What are the chances of that?

This photo was in my great-aunt Rose's collection, and she told me this story: William came home, married, and lived in Melbourne after the war.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nanna's story

  This is a deep story made on the My Heritage site using a photo of Joyce Ferguson. You choose the voice (although her accent is not Ulster Irish, it is the best they have at the moment). Writing the script and coordinating the other photos is reasonably straightforward.
Read more

The Telegram

Image
My first job after finishing school, while waiting to be old enough to start nursing training, involved receiving telegrams via telephone and typing them for dispatch at the PMG office in the heart of Melbourne. This bustling workplace had a workforce of around 50 individuals, predominantly women, who operated the telephones. You paid by the word sent, so they were usually brief. Today, the memory of receiving telegrams has primarily faded from people's minds. In fact, my last encounter with a telegram was during my first wedding in 1973.                       Grace Sandra perished last nights tragedy, heartfelt sympathy broken hearted writing love Stan This telegram my grandmother kept in her box of keepsakes for 40 years; the day it arrived, she went into shock, and her hair went white overnight.  Grace Rebeca Spooner, my mother's eldest sister, married a dashing young airman from Perth who arrived in Mildura to undergo ...
Read more