© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

An uncensored letter from wartime New Guinea

To beat the official censors who read mail sent by Australians serving in New Guinea in World War 2, those servicemen sometimes got their mates going home on leave to carry letters and post them in Australia. It was a simple and effective way to evade the prying eyes of officialdom, whose job it was to make sure that important military details didn't accidentally fall into enemy hands and that the people at home didn't hear too much about the grim reality of the war. Accounts I have read by servicemen suggest that mail from home…

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Mementos of my grandparents

My family has been talking, recently, about mementos. Specifically, what mementos will my children have of their grandparents? As I know from experience, the most significant and enduring mementos are those of attachment, emotion and sentiment, forged in the relationships between people. But it's nice, too, to have at least one or two physical reminders of the people we have known and loved. Of my four grandparents, the one to whom I was closest as a child was my maternal grandmother, Lily Jane Pritchell, nee Allsopp. Interestingly, she was not a blood relation. She and her…

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