Pte Bayly’s son Gordon has very few stories of his father, but a pic-ture tells a thousand words.
Gordon has sent three photos which together spell out the Centaur story for so many of us. The young soldier, the father with his small son, and Gordon at his father’s memorial plaque in the Walk-way at Caloundra. Gordon was only five when his father died.
Aub and his brother Jack, also in the 2/12th, jumped overboard together. Jack survived, but Aub was not seen again.
Like many of us who were very young when our fathers died, Gordon has only a few cameo memories of a father in uniform, home on occasional leave, then disappearing for long periods, till finally he didn’t come home at all. As children we waited and watched through many years. We were told they had been ‘lost at sea’, but it didn’t mean much. There was no grave, nothing tangi-ble to reinforce the message. They have been ‘lost’ for 66 years.
When Centaur is found they won’t be lost any more. We will at last, figuratively speaking, be able to bring them home.
