Tommy O’Neill’s handkerchief

Excerpt from At Sea Service narration.

Throughout the day relatives shared their stories and mementoes of the people they had come to honour.

Annette Ralston from Mirrawinni in Far North Queensland, attending with her mother Ellen O’Neill, showed a precious handkerchief that had belonged to her grandfather, Ambulance Driver Tommy O’Neill, who was lost on the Centaur.

The handkerchief contained 36 rare signatures of 2nd 12th Australian Field Ambulance members.

It was a moving moment as relatives recognised the names of loved ones signed so many years ago.

2nd 12th Ambulance reinforcement march 1942

hanky section a

hanky section b

hanky section c

hanky section d

hanky section e

hanky section ladies

Pte Thomas William O'Neill

1 Response to Tommy O’Neill’s handkerchief

  1. Kath Dahl says:

    I happened to find this photo by chance and recognise my brothers signature and his cousin’s is there as well. John Edward Stanley and Henry Oakley in the bottom left hand corner just above the “Don’t steal” …. Rather wonderful to see but sad as well.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s