Mystery behind a postcard
A postcard sent in 1915, from a battlefield in Turkey to South Taranaki, was found last week in a shopping mall in Townsville, Australia
Mystery surrounds a postcard sent in 1915 from a World War I battlefield in Turkey to South Taranaki, after it was found last week in a shopping mall in Townsville, Australia.
The postcard is now on its way across the Tasman to the son of its original recipient, thanks to a flurry of interest from social media users after news of the postcard find was published in Australia.
Cleaner Stephanie Schultz found the wartime postcard last week at a cash machine in a Townsville shopping centre, ABC News reported.
The postcard was sent to Roy Coombridge, of Te Kiri, by his brother-in-law Bert Cooke but when Schultz stumbled upon it, she originally mistook it for a discarded shopping list.
Upon closer inspection, she discovered it was an important piece of wartime history.
‘‘I thought it was just another receipt and was ready to chuck it in the bin,’’ Schultz told ABC News. ‘‘Then I noticed there was writing, and I thought it [was] probably just someone’s grocery list and I saw it was a card.
‘‘I started reading it and I was just like: Why is he talking about the Turks? and I was like: Oh my God.’’ A colleague pointed out the date stamp, which read 1915.
‘‘I realised that it was over 100 years old and I got the chills,’’ she told ABC News. ‘‘We were shocked that a card that old was still floating around.’’
Cooke was in his early 20s and serving with the Anzacs in Turkey when he wrote to his brother-inlaw, then aged 14, in Taranaki.
He said he was ‘‘going back to have another go at the Turks in a few days. It might be a long time before I can write again’’.
After reading the message, Schultz took to social media to try to track down the family.
‘‘I just thought someone might say: Oh that’s mine; but two lovely people have gone on the internet and researched the names, and they found the son,’’ she told ABC News.
‘‘Within 24 hours we knew [who] it belonged to.’’
One of those ‘‘lovely people’’ was former Taranaki man Martin Garcia, a keen family historian, who discovered a link to his own grandchildren when he tracked down Roy’s son, Kevin Coombridge.
He had searched for Coombridge in the years 1914 to 1918 on Papers Past and came up with an article about a Coombridge family who left Taranaki in 1917 for ‘‘Whanaroa’’, which he figured was Whangaroa,
‘‘I thought it was just another receipt and was ready to chuck it in the bin.’’ Stephanie Schultz Postcard finder
he said. A quick search in the online white pages found a phone number for a family with the same name and Garcia was soon speaking with Kevin’s wife, Glen Coombridge, Roy’s daughter-inlaw, and later passed the information on to Schultz.
When he returned to social media to share a video from Townsville 7 News about the postcard, Garcia saw a report from the ABC News, which was tagged to a friend who is the father of his son-in-law, Matthew.
‘‘I was gobsmacked and immediately called my daughter, Annaliese, who confirmed the family relationship.
‘‘So my two grandsons are Roy’s great-great grandchildren. ‘‘How amazing is that?’’ Kevin, who lives in Mangonui, said he was very surprised when Garcia rang about the postcard.
He was the youngest of his father’s five children, so did not know Bert Cooke, his uncle by marriage, very well.
‘‘I met Bert about three times as a little kid, so I remember him vaguely, he lived at Birkenhead.’’
Bert had poor health due to being exposed to mustard gas during the war.
‘‘Dad was only 14 when war broke out.’’
The Coombridge family had a farm in Waiteika Rd; 200 acres which they were breaking in from heavy bush.
At 14, Roy had been working on the farm for two years, after leaving school at 12.
‘‘They were pretty much early settlers. He walked three or four miles barefoot to school over rough metalled and mud roads, after getting up at 5am to help milk the cows; every member of the family had to do their share.’’
His mother did the family’s washing outside using a barrel of water and a scrubbing board, with hot water coming from a kerosene tin hanging over an open fire. She also baked bread and scones on a fire in a camp oven.
The family left Taranaki when Roy was 17 but he remained fond of the region, Kevin said.
‘‘Dad used to talk about Taranaki a lot, he loved the place.’’
Roy dedicated his life to service as a Methodist pastor. He died in 1985 at the age of 85.
Kevin said once the postcard arrived, they would send it on to Bert’s daughter, Shirley, who is in her 90s.
Exactly how the postcard ended up in Townsville remained a mystery, he said.
‘‘It would be nice to think it fell down the back of a desk somewhere, it looked a bit dogeared. The postmark is some army base, it does not tell where.
‘‘We don’t even know if it got to him in the first place.
‘‘It would be nice to find out what took place.’’