Letter from home 1918

My grandfather, Edwin William "Slip" Carr, enlisted in the AIF in October 1917 and sailed from Sydney to Egypt in the Troopship Darwin in April 1918. He was a Trooper (No 4481) in the 2nd Australian Machine Gun Squadron, part of the famous Australian Light Horse Brigade. He spent nearly a year in the Middle East, returning to Sydney in April 1919.

His family wrote him many letters and he wrote back. We have the letters he received because he kept them in a calico bag and brought them home. I have only one page of a letter which he wrote home, which is a shame.

He was 18 when he went away and his family and friends must have worried terribly. The news was very bad from a war that dragged on interminably. So many young men (mostly) were killed or maimed, at Gallipoli and on the Western Front.

His older brother Ernie wrote more letters than anyone, giving him the news from home. Here is the first page of a letter Ernie wrote in August 1918.

Ernie said:

My Dear Brother,

            We received your welcome and interesting letter dated 30.8.1918. It was very good of you to write under such difficulties. My word you seem to be in the thick of the fighting. Hope you come through safely old man. We are all very worried about you. It is all a matter of luck & fate as you say. All the old towns must be very interesting. You will have some tales to tell us on your return. Take great care of yourself. In my last letter I enclosed a 10/- note. Hope it reaches you safely. Will do that now and again. Leo sent you a £1.0.0 note.

ANZAC centenary project 2015

Ku-ring-gai Historical Society in Sydney (KHS) is commemorating the centenary of ANZAC day in 2015 with an interesting project.

ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps which came together to fight in WWI. On 25 April 1915, British, ANZAC and other allied forces, including the French and Indians, landed on the shores of Gallipoli to open up a new front in the war with Turkey and the Germans. It ended months later in bitter defeat, with a hasty retreat and a terrible loss of life on both sides.

ANZAC Day is one of the most important days for Australians and New Zealanders. It means different things to different people but for me it is a time to remember so many people who have suffered in times of war and who gave their life or made other sacrifices. And not only those in uniform but their families who also suffered and sacrificed with them.

KHS will publish a book in 2015 to commemorate the people of the Ku-ring-gai area (on the North Shore of Sydney) who served in WWI. Their names have been compiled from the many monuments to the “Great War” in the district. Volunteers from KHS (including me) are researching and writing 500-word stories of the soldiers, sailors and nurses who served. However, because there are so many names, the book will be limited to those who did not come back and those who were decorated.

There are many free websites for researching the stories of these people, including:

• National Archives of Australia (NAA) for the official service records of people in the Army, Navy and Air Force, in many conflicts
• Australian War Memorial, for nominal rolls, honours and awards, the Red Cross wounded and missing files and much more
• Trove website (National Library of Australia), including the digitised Australian newspapers (1803-1954)
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission recording and maintaining the graves and memorials of servicemen buried overseas
• and many more

I am enjoying being involved in this project. It is a good way to honour the sacrifice made by these people and their families and to learn more about the past.

So what’s he actually done?

The journey started nearly twenty years ago (see post 23 May 2013). I have been researching and writing, on and off, since 1994:

• Go through the trunk belonging to my grandfather, Edwin William “Slip” Carr, sort and conserve
• Transcribe letters to Slip from family and friends when he was away at the First World War in the Middle East (1917-1919)
• Sort, transcribe and catalogue scrapbooks, letters, postcards and photographs from Slip’s sporting career (1916 to 1924). Slip represented Australia in Rugby Union and at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He equalled US sprinter Charlie Paddock’s 1920 OR for 100m in 1923 and set a WR for the 60m sprint twice that year.
• Research the vital records of the Carr line, up through my father, Eddie, my grandfather, Slip, and my great grandfather, TP Carr and their families
• Gather stories from my father, aunts and uncles and other family members about this line of people; receive precious gifts of photos, objects and documents from family
• Some research into my grandmother’s people – the Tysons. Her maiden name was May Queenie Tyson. A lot of work has been done by other genealogists on the Tyson family in Australia. Isabella Tyson, the matriarch, was a convict. One of her sons, James, became a fabulously wealthy pastoralist, known as “the Cattle King” - a wonderful “rags to riches” story. Click here for more about James Tyson in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
• Convert my father’s and grandfather’s 16mm home movies (some filmed in the 1930s) into digital format
• Discover my great, great grandfather, William Henry Carr, who was born in Ireland and who emigrated to Australia in the 1850s. The family of William’s wife, Maria Lillyman, has extensively researched the Lillyman family
• Discover that William Henry Carr had up to 15 brothers and sisters (wow), about eight of whom also migrated to Australia and New Zealand in the 19thC; research their descendants
• This year (2013), I came into contact with some of the descendants of the siblings of William Henry Carr, expanding my knowledge of the extended Australian family
• Another person contacted is GJ, a fourth cousin in Wales, UK who has generously shared her research and information about the Carrs back in Ireland. She also unlocked many of the secrets of a mysterious letter I found in Slip’s trunk. Written in the early 1920s by a distant Irish relative, it potentially expands significantly the Irish family tree.

[Photo: Slip Carr, Copenhagen, 1923]

Uncle Leo

Here's that photograph of Uncle Leo in his RAN officer's uniform (see post 23 May 2013). The badge on his sleeve looks like that of a Commander (See RAN ranks).

Leopold James Phillimore Carr (1892-1970) was the second son of TP and Harriett Carr. He had a distinguished career as an Engineer in the RAN, serving for 35 years from 1915. He reached the highest rank possible for a Navy Engineer and was awarded an OBE for service in the Atlantic during WWII.

Check out his entry on the WWII Nominal Roll.

He never married. He was an intelligent, kind and generous man who had a good sense of humour. I plan to do more research into his life... some day!