Wartime postcard tells of sibling love
When Anne Horrell spotted the postcard with a floral design at a second-hand fair, she knew she was meant to treasure it.
The fair had a lot of old coins, medals and postcards, and being something of a postcard collector, Horrell picked it up along with a couple of others.
‘‘I’m fascinated by postcards, what they say, who they are from.’’
The message on the back is from 1916, a brother away at war writing to his little sister.
It doesn’t have an address on it, nor identifying surnames. Horrell doesn’t even know what region it has come from, just that it is to Hazel from her loving brother Jim.
The Tuatapere woman is touched by the message written, and has thought about it a lot.
‘‘It shows that Jim adores his little sister Hazel, is thinking of her and despite everything has not forgotten that she will be going to school.’’
She thinks it is lovely that Jim chose such a pretty postcard for his sister.
The postcard begins; ‘‘Only a PC [postcard] to let you see I have not forgotten you . . .’’
Horrell believes this is because Hazel had asked her big brother not to forget her when he was away, and he was proving that he indeed hadn’t.
It was hard to understand why such a special postcard ended up in a travelling fair in 2005, and it had left her with a lot of questions, she said.
‘‘Did Hazel treasure her postcard from Jim? Did he die in war? And was her house estate after death handed over to second-hand dealers? Why wouldn’t family treasure the postcard? Was it a mistake that it was not retained?’’
While Horrell would gladly hang on to the postcard, she would be happy to see it returned to family.
‘‘As much as I treasure the postcard from Jim to his little sister Hazel, if the family recognised the names I would pass it on to them.’’