Anzac Day: Author honours Dad’s WWII contribution in print

BRISBANE author Vicki Bennett has drawn on her father’s proud military history to pen a children’s book.

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GEORGE McGregor loved Anzac Day.

“The last time he was in the parade, he was in one of those Jeeps because he was having trouble with his legs,” daughter Vicki Bennett said.

“I remember him sitting in this Jeep with his hat on and he was just so proud.”

Mr McGregor was behind enemy lines during WWII, but long before that, when he was five years old, he was involved in helping to heal the scars left by conflict.

Ms Bennett wrote the children’s book Two Pennies, which was inspired by her dad’s involvement in a campaign by Victorian schoolchildren to rebuild a devastated school in Villers-Bretonneux in France after WWI.

“It was one of the most exciting things in his life,” she said. “His father had a bakery and he used to get up and look after the horses and feed them. Then when they came back from their rounds he would brush them and wash them. It took him weeks to earn these two pennies.”

Mr McGregor was heavily involved in volunteer work throughout his life, spending 30 years on the RSL state committee.

He also spent two years at RSL Care Fairview at Pinjarra Hills before he died in 2012.

Ms Bennett hopes the readers of Two Pennies will take a positive message from her father’s story.

“That out of war, there’s always that ability to heal. There is always hope. And that a little boy could make a difference,” she said.

Originally published as Anzac Day: Author honours Dad’s WWII contribution in print