1934: Brick buys a Kimona

The Gazette prints a sentimental tale of a boy’s sacrifices for his mother.

Brick’s breath expelled on a long breath that was almost a sob. He peeked through the crack of the swinging door to the living room. His mother stood facing him, holding the gorgeous blue “kimona” up to her shoulders. Regretfully, she began folding it carefully back into its tissue wrappings. …

Then he saw it again. Three days later. It was in a shop window, and there was nothing else there. Only the blue kimona. Some way, somehow, he must get that blue kimona for mumsy.

Read the complete story here.

1944: A soldier’s letter home

Cpl. Milton Heffernan, H. & P.E. Regiment, who suffered a shrapnel wound in the arm on December 6th while in action in Italy, writes his mother, Mrs. Andrew Heffernan, under date of January 2nd as follows:

Just a few lines once again to let you know I’m getting on fine and hope to be going out of hospital in a few days. Well Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone once again and the time sure goes by very fast so here’s hoping this will be the last year of the war. It will be quite a while before I get my Christmas mail, because when one goes to hospital it takes a long time for mail to catch up.

The weather has been quite cold here lately with a lot of wind but no snow yet. Of course I don’t know if they get much here or not. Of course you know I had another birthday after Christmas. I was twenty-eight, really getting close to the thirty mark. It makes my fifth one since I left home. It is also four years ago today since we landed in Aldershot, England. News is scarce these days especially in hospital, so I’ll close for now, wishing you all the best for the New Year. Loving son, Milton.