03 May 2015

The 2014 Christmas Tale continues

More success from Bill.

Last December I wrote a story entitled ‘A Christmas Tale – A Work in Progress’. 
Slowly the story of the return of those medals is coming to an end. On the Saturday prior to Anzac Day 2015 I had the honour of passing to Phillip his grandfather’s WW1 Victory Medal.
2525 Charles Henry Craike passed away in 1956. Sometime after this his medals disappeared.
That is until the Victory Medal was handed into Anzac House here in Melbourne. The person leaving it offered no details as to how it had come into their possession.
Even though Charles passed his enlistment medical examination he would later be diagnosed with having chronic flat feet. This calls in to question how thorough enlistment medicals were in 1916. However, the skills Charles had acquired as a bank clerk saw him promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant and employed in the Graves Service.
Perhaps it was while doing this important work in France that he meet Jeane Julia Lasson, the young lady he married in July 1919 and who later followed him to Australia.

The returned medal tally is now 1671.

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