My grandmother’s ring was very large indeed, so big it hung loosely on my mother’s thumb when she wore it to the jewelers to have it resized. The jeweler was intrigued but didn’t ask questions.
My grandmother told me the story in her tiny, crowded kitchen many, many years ago when I innocently asked her why her left ring finger was always bent down into her palm.
This is what she told me. I will tell her story as best I can but I can give you no dates, no names. My grandmother told them to me as a child but I retained only the story and not the details. By the time I was old enough to ask, my days were filled with babies, all the busyness of family life. When I had the time, she was gone. My mother knew the details. I would ask her. I had plenty of time until suddenly I realised my mother could no longer remember. I had left it too late.
This is my grandmothers WW1 story as best as I can remember it. It’s her story and it’s everyone’s story.
Adeline, my grandmother was born in 1902 in Mildura, Victoria. She was part of a large, farming family. Everyone had big families those days. Lots of sons to work the land, carry on the family name, farm and traditions. Adeline was twelve when the war started. The eldest in her family, her brothers were all too young to go to war. But her uncles and cousins were not. Slowly they started disappearing off to war. There were the goodbye parties, the send-offs, the tears of pride, sadness. The farms started to look neglected, crops not sown, harvests smaller.
This particular day Adeline was sewing at the kitchen table when there was a knock at the door. Opening the door, she saw her favourite uncle, standing there solemnly in his uniform, his kit by his feet. The expression on his face told it all. He was leaving for the war and had come to say goodbye. Distressed, Adeline scooped up all the things on the table to clear it to make some tea and in so doing, drove a needle into the base of her left ring finger. Soon it became infected and Adeline was seriously ill. The infection entered the tendon in her finger and caused it to bend in towards her palm. It became a permanent reminder of the last time she saw that favourite uncle because, like so many others, he did not return from the war.
The family moved to West Heidelberg. Adeline married a good man. It was not possible for Adeline to wear a wedding ring on her bent ring finger so a special ring was made that was big enough to slip over her middle finger. Sometimes on ANZAC Day, I would see my grandmother sitting with her hands clasped a faraway look in her eyes and know she was thinking of this favourite uncle. I know so little about him. I know my grandmother loved him and missed him dearly but I don’t know his name, which side of the family he came from, where he was posted, where he died. I know he wasn’t married and that he joined up as soon as he was old enough. I know that he died before he had time to marry, start a family, live his life. His line stops sometime during WW1.
Adeline’s loss was typical of the many at home who mourned loved ones who would never come home. My loss is that I didn’t take the time to find out names, dates, times, places. Take the time, reader, to find out about these people, these stories, before those who can tell you all disappear.
My mother wears that wedding ring now on one hand and on the other, a ring given to her by her own soldier husband who also went off to war but who, thankfully, came home safely.
This story first appeared in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
