Let’s Not Forget

Knife
Notebook
Pipe
Hairbrush
Key
Six coins
Cards
Diary
Bible
Photos
The personal effects of Private Charles Joseph Pryor, 4th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, were sent to my great, great grandmother, along with a pension of two pounds each fortnight, following his death in action at Gallipoli Peninsula between the sixth and ninth of August 1915. The timespan given for his death merely suggests the terrible carnage that must have faced those charged with the grim collection of bodies and wounded during and after the battles on that otherwise idyllic Aegean seashore.
He had signed up only the previous October, a fair haired, blue-eyed young man of 25, leaving several brothers and sisters, my great grandfather among them, back in south London, joining the thousands in several countries dedicated to fighting the war that was supposed to end them all.