18th May 2017
I was shovelling through my filing cabinet yesterday - can't even remember what I was looking for now - oh, I know - it was the letters that the WW2 Diggers wrote to my Mum back in the mid '40s - we had quite a bunch of the AIF go through the place back then. It was some Government initiative as I understand it, private homes putting themselves up as sort of Drop-In Centres for soldiers on leave, so the house was regularly full of uniforms and big boots and glasses of beer around the piano, singing going well into the evening, and at least one case of malaria sweated out on the sofa, me and my elder brother shuffled off so we wouldn't hear too much of the delirium as the attack worked through his system.
And when they went back, they'd write to Mum from The Middle East and from New Guinea, as they all clearly loved getting mail and parcels from "Aussie", and lifelong friendships were made, and some came back, but too many didn't. It was a time that was of the moment, and nostalgia drips from every faded page.
Quite a few letters survived, and Mum passed them on to me a couple of years back just before she died, aged 102. Always said she would. So I decided to transcribe them while they're still readable, then donate the originals to the National Archives.
Which is a long-winded way of saying how I came across my own, very personal, WW2 writings. I fell over my First Grade "diary", which Mum had also kept all those years. I was 6 - it had to be 1945 - and it was like opening up a time capsule the first time I thumbed through it. It's a standard school "wartime austerity" exercise book cut in halves by the look of it, and if I can get the old neurons to look back 72 years, I can remember Miss Hayter (all us 6 year olds thought she was just peachy!) getting us to write down every Monday morning - WITH illustrations - what we did on the weekend. And yep, it's all a bit cheesy-cutesy, but hey, THIS is where all great writers begin!!
Have a decko at these ........
.... now THAT'S not a bad representation of a maroon 1932 Dodge Roadster, with the wire wheels and the dicky seat in the back! Running on severely rationed wartime petrol. Me and my brother sitting up there looking damn pleased with ourselves! Geez we loved that car, wish THAT had been kept and handed on down as well. But then there was the time ....
..... when Dad was out at the Army Repat "hospidl" (close!) with tubes coming out from under the bedclothes. By then the Dodge was up on blocks and it was the tram for us. And not a bad sort of a tram eh? Get the detail - even has the hooks that the overhead power-runner-thingos went into when they were down! And just looking at that right at this moment, so many "triggers", so many bits of memory now coming back. Some good, some not so good. But isn't that the whole point of artefacts from the past? We are all the poorer for not having these kinds of things to keep our long-distance memories attached to.
Thanks Mum....