The psychological effects of war definitely impacts on our veterans and is still a huge issuefor our military personnel today.

Our diggers just did their best they could, to keep themselves busy and their minds active.

The following is the story of how one digger spent his down time during WWII, to keep his mind busy –

Several years ago my family had the arduous task of selling off the family home.

Our dad, a WWII veteran, was in the later stages of dementia and was in full-time care, so mum called on her three children to ‘go through dad’s stuff’.

Dad had been a hoarder all his life and this was far from an easy job.  I remember as a child he would go to the dump with half a trailer load and proudly return with a full one.

It took several weeks of laughing and crying with each item sorted, as a lifetime of family memories came flooding back. It was not easy to decide the fate of your father’s treasured items, from his shed.

Mum had asked a family friend, John to help sell off the unwanted furniture and possessions.  John asked if he could rummage through the skip bin of discarded items, as there could be saleable items in there.

A short time later John called out to mum, to see if she could spare five minutes as he walked in with a rusty old cake tin in his hands.

To mums surprise the tin contained tiny, hand-made tools, mother of pearl shell, a tin of hand-worked silver pieces and several small works of jewellery in progress.

John told mum that it was common during the war for the diggers to have an interest in such things as jewellery making, as part of a mental diversion [from the trauma of war].  He asked if dad was ever into jewellery making.

Mum explained that he used to make a few things in the islands during World War II, but that was long before they had met.

She told John: ‘Roy never drank, so he would swap his beer rations with the Yanks in exchange for their silver dollars, which he used in making jewellery.’  But mum said that she had never seen the tin before and was not sure if it was even his.

With dad’s dementia so far progressed, there was no way of finding out the tin’s history.

We all agreed that dad’s mother had probably sent him a Christmas cake in the tin which he’d kept it to put his treasures in.

A few days later my brother stumbled across a roll of unprocessed film amongst dad’s belongings.

He got the film developed and the family could not believe what was revealed.

The photos were images of dad during the war in the islands; a couple with a friendly monkey, three unknown men outside their tents, dad getting a haircut outside his tent, the inside of a Beaufighter cockpit and the last photo was of dad sitting at a camp table outside his tent intently working away and there beside him was the cake tin, the smaller tin and tiny tools.

 My father, Roy Parnell passed away from dementia aged 84 on November 18, 2008.  He was an aircraft mechanic in 31 Squadron RAAF – Beaufighter, which served in Coomalie Creek NT, Morotai and Tarakan during World War II.