Mina Watt’s father, Harry Mitchell, did not speak much of his time in World War 1, but she has never forgotten one story.
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“He was coming back one evening and there was a young German man in a trench, mortally wounded,” Mrs Watt, aged 94 years, said.
Her father stopped and gave the dying man a cigarette.
“The young man took his photographs of his family out of his pocket and showed them to (my father). He said, ‘I remember thinking that could just as easily be me’, because, two generations back, we were German.”
Mrs Watt’s great grandmother was German – also named Mina.
Mrs Watt believes that display of ready compassion for “the enemy” was by no means uncommon.
“The heads might have been trying to kill everybody, but the boys had a great feeling of camaraderie,” she said.
This conversation with Mrs Watts took place on November 8 at the opening of Narooma Historical Society’s exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War in the SoART Gallery.
The Exhibition “Narooma Remembers – Brave Hearts and Smiling Faces” was curated by Society members and volunteers, assisted by a ‘Saluting their Service’ grant from the Australian Government.
The show closed yesterday and was a triumph and a credit to all involved.
Not being great on computers, Joan Lynch said the best way she could help was baking.
Her Anzac biscuits and fruit cake were proudly displayed – authentic examples of just what would have been sent to troops in care packages – complete with a liberal dose of hard liquor. She remembers baking such cakes in World War II.
”We used to send them off to my mother’s relatives in England,” she said.
“We used to cook fruit cakes and biscuits and send them off. I was nine when World War II started and 15 when it finished.
“Fruit cakes are fairly dense, so they keep fairly well.
“This one is laced with brandy.”
Mrs Lynch is a harsh judge of her own cake: “I haven’t made a fruitcake for years. That one is cracked because it is the first time I have made one in this stove, so I did not get the temperature right.”
We don’t think anyone on the receiving end of one of her care packages would mind.
She has had far more practise with Anzac biscuits.
“My husband was born on Anzac Day, so I used to make the biscuits every year for his birthday instead of a cake,” she said.
She was full of praise for the exhibition.
“They have done a terrific job,” she said.
Marion Goard’s hand-spun socks also were a talking point.
“All the women knitted socks,” she said of those who prepared care parcels.
“The socks would have been whatever the women had at home,” she said.
The exhibition was important.
“We have to celebrate the signing of the peace after so much sacrifice of our soldiers. They thought it would all be finished before Christmas in 1914.
“My grandfather and grandmother sailed from England on the fourth of August from Plymouth to Australia. They were only two weeks out when war broke out. They came all the way with no lights, because the German submarines were torpedoing the merchant navies to stop England getting supplies.”