Thankyou for the welcome Dee and Lones. I am hoping that I will be able to work out Kooka's connection. Mine is as follows. Charlie had two sisters and a brother. One of the sisters, Ada Joyce was my grandmother. I always new about Uncle Charlie as his mother, Mary Jane whom I knew as 'Grandma', lived into her nineties, dying when I was about sixteen. As a child I picked up on the fact that the mention of Charlie's name caused distress for Mary Jane. She was a lovely soul and I'm going to see if I can attach a photo of Mary Jane and her husband Alfred John which was probably taken after their marriage. She looks very young but I have calculated that she was only 17 when they married and Alfred John was 22.
Ada Joyce married my grandfather John Leigh and from that union came my mother Joyce Mary and a son Donald Forster.
I have always been very interested in history and have in fact quite a collection of family history and memorabilia.
In 2000 I privately published my grandfather (John Leigh)'s diaries from W.W.1. He served at both Gallipoli and the Western Front where he was shot in the head but survived and returned home. At the end of the diary I included a section on Uncle Charlie - his photograph, a letter from Buckingham Palace, the envelope addressed to his parents in Maffra containing his war medals, and a copy of Sgt Parr's beautiful letter. It has always moved me to tears whenever I have re-read it. It was sent to my mother by Charlie's brother's wife, ie. Uncle Jack. He married rather later to a lady called Dorothy. In a letter to my mother in 1994 she says " my son Douglas also has a letter about Charles" She goes on to say that she was getting a copy for my mother but I believe she was terminally ill at the time and I did not find the letter amongst my mother's things.
Charlie was a talented artist. In my office I have a charcoal sketch of a cocker spaniel puppy that Charlie drew and I also have his sister Ada's autograph book from her teenage years in which Charlie has painted a number of charming illustrations.
It came as quite a shock to me this morning when I stumbled onto all the correspondence related to the search for Charlie and Sgt. Parr's relatives. I was actually looking for the date of death for Mary Jane (it was 1961) and had no idea about the original letter having been found. And I'm perplexed as to how Dorothy could have had a copy whilst the original was behind a photo frame!
Anyway, I'll try to attach the photo of Charlie's parents now. I do have more photos if anyone would like to see them.
I don't know if any of Sgt. Parr's descendants will read this, but if they do I hope they will be proud of their connection to what was obviously a very decent human being. All of Charlie's family were gentle people and I know they must have been comforted by his words. I didn't know he had died too - how must his family have felt losing three sons.
