Claire Forbes's story about Roy

Father and husband's war service

Well the First World War my father enlisted in 1916. He and my mother married shortly before he enlisted so all of our family were born after his return.

I have no knowledge of that because I wasn't born until 1928 but when my father came home both he and my husband served together on the Western Front.

Both were signallers and my father found that my husband was missing in one of the battles of September of 1918 and he went looking for him and found him badly injured and managed to carry him to a clearing station and there he was taken and received help and admitted to St. George's Hospital in Stamford England and after a few months he was sent back to Adelaide and discharged.

When my father returned home, he continued in active service until the end of the war, the First World War.

He never really recovered

He never fully recovered because his wounds included punctured lungs and forearm damage.

He still carried shrapnel, he had congestive cardiac failure all secondary to those conditions but when he first came home his health maintained with medical care.

He was a Commonwealth public servant and he was working in the law courts in Adelaide.

Gradually health problems intervened but it didn't stop him from still maintaining contact with all the people he knew particularly the ex-service people and with my father at home.

Her father's blessing

Oh I can remember my father's words, his final time, as I said, was a heart attack and I had a phone call to say that he'd been admitted.

So I went in to see him and he, I saw his ECG the report of his heart and on the way in and spoke to the doctor and he just shook his head at me so I knew that he only had a short time but when I went to him we chatted for a while and he said 'Now I can safely go because you're going to be with one of the finest men I've ever known.'

Anzac services

He never missed the Anzac services both the dawn and the march, participated and so did Roy, my husband, and then there was the third and final service at the Cross of Sacrifice in Adelaide and they attended those.

I don't recall them missing any them while they were able. They also, those who lived near the city, used to meet regularly for lunch, at least fortnightly, Dad would join them if he could.

There was always a regular 43rd annual reunion which he attended but there was a traditional lunchtime picnic followed Anzac Day and Dad would volunteer for the supplying of food and the menu included Cornish pasties which in those days we didn't have mod cons so it was all hand done, first by my mother and then I took over for many years and made the lunch for them.

Homemade pasties, homemade sauce etcetera and I, of course, got to meet those men. It was more than mateship, comradeship perhaps of all the men who had continued their relationship even after the war.