Great great grandpa's medals make it home for Anzac Day

Kind stranger returns lost WWI medals to military museum

NOT FORGOTTEN: Georgie the dog and grandson Macka are happy to have Carleen Hawk's grandfather's medals home. Picture: Jann Houley

WHAT Carleen Hawk loves most about Anzac Day is the sound of her grandfather's medals in the darkness.

"Walking to the Gracemere RSL before dawn, all you can hear is his medals clinking against my grandson Macka's chest, close to his heart” she said.

"It's eerie but I love it: that same sound echoing over a century and five generations of close-knit family.”

So when Mrs Hawk lost the medals three weeks ago in Rockhampton, she was understandably devastated.

The medals were part of a memorabilia frame which fell off a wall in the home she shares with her daughter's family.

She got as far as Mi-Art shop in East St, to have the frame repaired, before she realised the three World War I medals were missing.

At first, she didn't panic but asked Macka if he had found them at home, then went through the car "with a fine toothed comb”.

Slowly it dawned on her that they were gone, and worse, just weeks before Anzac Day.

Mrs Hawk grew up with her "best friend and confidante”, her maternal grandfather Thomas Barker.

Discharged from the army after he was wounded in Gallipoli, and retired from his job on the Bowen wharves, Mr Barker lived with his daughter and her family including young Carleen.

"There was the evidence of his war wounds in his scars and he had false teeth where the bullet had knocked them out,” she said.

"He told us how he had to be fed through a straw for months and month after he came back from the front.”

Mr Barker passed away shortly before Mrs Hawk moved to Rockhampton to begin a hairdressing apprenticeship.

"He was everything to me, and I'm like that to Macka now,” said Mrs Hawk who moved in with her daughter's family over two years ago.

Most teenagers would prefer to sleep in on a public holiday but 16 year-old Macka's up earliest to hustle everyone out the door to dawn service.

"He recruits his mates, tells them to sleep over so there's no excuse not to get up and go the service,” his mother said.

"He's really reconnected me with how important a tradition Anzac Day is and now I'm proud to attend as well.”

Macka, who attends Rockhampton State High School, said he's been raised with great respect for the Anzacs and even thought about joining the armed forces.

"Losing a morning out of your life is nothing compared to what they went through,” he said.

"Being there with my great-great-grandfather's medals is like there's still a part of him around for my Nan.”

So Mrs Hawk raced to the war museum to organise replacements for the lost medals.

"I just grabbed the card for Mr Patterson [who offers medal repairs and replacements] but I didn't tell the lady behind the desk why,” she said.

If she had, Mrs Hawk's search would have come to a halt sooner... for the medals had just made their way to that same museum.

Mr Graham Guth, a museum volunteer, contacted The Morning Bulletin last Friday to say a passer-by handed the medals in, and they were photographed in the next day's paper.

Rachel Bambling, Mrs Hawk's daughter, was enjoying a coffee and flicking through the paper when her eyes fell on the three medals pictured.

"I was so excited because I knew how panicked Mum was,” she said.

"I felt like I'd won the Lotto.”

And on the other end of the phone, at home with Macka, Mrs Hawk screamed and "jumped up and down for joy.”

"She gave everyone the biggest hug,” said Macka who was hanging out with his mates.

"They think she's the coolest Nan ever so they were really happy for her too.”

It was a timely, happy ending which will see Macka and his mates step out again next weekend, 'lest we forget'.

And Mrs Hawk will be next to them when she stops to honour Thomas Barker and his mates with a minute's silence.

"That's when he's foremost in my mind, when I feel closest to him,” she said.

"He was an absolute treasure to me and that's a joy to stop and remember.”

Originally published as Great great grandpa's medals make it home for Anzac Day