The Quilt - So Our Nation Never Forgets...

• Scott Rogers, Grade 7, Picton High School
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

When I was younger, I was looking through old photos and in amongst pictures of my grandfather’s family, was a black and white photo of a young man in an Australian military uniform. I got really excited, it looked so much like my mum’s dad when he was younger and knowing that he had been in the military, I asked my mum, “When was this photo of Grandfather taken?”
She explained “That is not your Grandfather. That was a young man from our family who was killed in war.”
I asked “Was it at Gallipoli?” My mum replied, “No, he was killed in the forgotten war.”
“What is the forgotten war?” I asked. “Korea” she answered.
My mum said “Come and look at this on the computer.” She opened a file named ‘Teddy’.
I had seen this file on the desktop before, but had never opened it.
In the file was a document which was from the Australian War Memorial.
It was the Roll of Honour and the name Private Edward Charles Rogers was on it.
It said he had died on the 21st July, 1952, aged 19.
Wow, that is so very young; he was only a few years older than me when he died.
We decided to look at his unit history, 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment.
We went through the files and found the day he died.
Matching the date, we found that they were bombed. I felt many emotions learning how he died. On one hand it was important to know what had happened to him, but on the other, finding it was such a brutal way that he died, upset me very much, even though I had never known him.
I asked my Grandfather if he could tell me about Teddy.
“He was in the reserves first and then decided to join the regular army.
In those days you had to get your parent’s permission to enlist if your where under 21.
Teddy’s dad refused to sign his papers, so his mum did”, my Grandfather told me.
“He had sent a letter home not long before he was killed telling his mum, that he had bought an expensive watch and was going to have it sent home.
His mum never received the watch, it never came home. His mum was heartbroken, that she never received it.”
“After requesting Teddy’s file, it was discovered that another soldier was killed in the bombing too, with the watch accidentally being sent to the other soldier’s family” Grandfather said “At least we solved the mystery of Teddy’s watch.”
A quilt was made to commemorate those Australian soldiers killed in Korea 1950-1953, so our nation would never forget those who gave their lives.
Teddy’s name appears on that quilt, along with the other 340 soldiers who died.
He never returned home.
Every year on Anzac day we go and place a poppy on his name on the honour roll memorial.
Lest we forget