WWII SOLDIER’S GREAT ESCAPE

“We Nearly Came Undone”

Akhaki felt army cap has sat on a bookshelf in my home in Sydney for nine years. Two metal pressstuds secure the brim, and the five-pointed, red communist star graces the front. The crown has the faint odour of human sweat. It is a partizanka, a cap worn by Yugoslav Partisan soldiers in Croatia and western Bosnia during World War II. The partizanka is something of a collector’s piece, as few like it remain. For me, it represents a promise I need to fulfil.

Ernest ‘Ern’ Brough, pictured here soon after the war, was just 20 when he signed up