Starting with the trip to Holbrook, where the name of an officer to do with the heroism in the 2nd world war got my attention. Hmm…cousin B was made a widow in ww2, and her husband had the same surname. I wonder if they were the same gentleman?

I am used to chasing these sort of details, especially using the national archives here in Australia. This archives has detailed service records of ww1 and ww2 servicemen and women, scanned by volunteers, who also correct any errors that come through. Some service..people haven’t been scanned as yet, but the volunteers are hard at work, reducing the backlog. And Trove..another archive, but newspapers and suchlike, going waaay back. We start with the National archives..

So, the gentleman’s name..a blank..just the surname. Um. Using the surname alone generated some six hundred possibilities…yaas. A bit much. Cousin B’s birthdate..nope. Other so called free lookup services were tried..I was reluctant to agree to a 14 day trial, or use my own details to sign up for this type of service.  I..um..managed to get around this with one service, only to find they didn’t know about cousin B. Damn! wasted effort I thought. You can get creative, though, by asking different questions..sorting through existing family trees out there. Trove wasn’t much help…did say that cousin B’s death notice was mentioned in the Gold Coast Bulletin…but I couldn’t find what Trove did.  Births deaths and marriages were no help. Some crowd in America had done a great job, linking their family to ours…B was there, but no marriage date or anything useful. Finally..back to the national archives..all the servicemen with the same surname..600 odd. They list the name, service number etc, but underneath, easier to spot, was the next of kin. A dozen or so pages later, here it was..he wasn’t Tasmanian after all, which was a field I had used..with no result. The gentleman mentioned in Holbrook was cleared early in the piece..he married a different lady.

A sergeant in the RAAF he was, B’s husband. He went missing with the plane over Sollum Bay, in Egypt.

I hesitated to ask That side of the family for these details..this is the sort of thing I excel at..on occasion! Took me a while.

A possibility occurred to my Honeybun..could they be brothers? Um! Didn’t think to check that possibility out, eh.

Born in different towns…but the parents could have moved. Born 15 odd years apart, but..that was those days.

So, the sergeants’ records.

He applied to join up whilst single, but was knocked back. He listed his next of kin, first two initials and surname, of..his mother..I thought. He applied again, after marrying our cousin, and was accepted this time, so she was listed as next of kin.

So, unusual first and middle name combination of his ‘mother’. Getting nowhere, oh well, try that name. Suddenly, that name appeared in Trove, and thence in ww1 records..as a gentleman who went to that war. Oh, right! Silly me!  So, our boys dad went to ww1, got back alive, and at least one of his sons joined up for ww2.

At time of writing, 5am, about to start the last leg of our trip home, staying at another motel..in Narrabri.., which had dodgy wifi..sigh..but suddenly cleared up eight thirty Sunday night..so either there were too many people logged in, and or a Someone hogging the bandwidth had logged off. Naow, I need to log in again, necessitates walking over to the office..next to the wifi aerial, and trying again. 5am? Nuh! Wait till we get home. Sigh.