I'm so slow on the up take......

[CINDERS]

I found a long forgotten thumb drive the other day and ventured to open it up to see what I had actually stored on it.
Had a bit of stuff from when I was doing safety, auditing the business, an ICAM investigation I conducted for a personal injury to a worker plus the start of itemising my book collection.
Did not get far with the books after 30 odd sourcing web copies for prices, grading, year of print, type and so on as I just became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work!

Anyway along with other stuff was a file that was sent to me by my B/in-law (Now deceased) who was himself a VN vet well the file was my father's WWII papers.
So apart from those that wrote on his records of which it was so hard to make out as they must have taken lessons from Dr's writing scripts just so hard to decipher.
Anyway I did make out 85 Sqdn and OTU but the rest may have been egyptian trying to read it that was until I came to the bottom of one page of his service record.

Here it stated 3 chevrons awarded or something like that but it was the 3 chevrons which caught my eye and my muddy brain started putting 2 + 2 = 5 ?
Years ago after my brother died in 1990 I received some of dad's stuff his medals, RAAF buttons and a few other things along with these 2 pictured items.
Now at the time I thought it odd dad would collect these things but thought they would look good on my book shelf where they have sat for yes I know 34 years !!!!!!!

So I looked at them understanding what they actually are and got pretty emotional about it even though my dad passed away in 1985 it was a sledgehammer blow to me.
So the two items together is physical proof and written proof of my fathers 3 years over seas WWII deployment as he never spoke to me of his war experiences.
The only thing he ever said to me once when I was very young building a model spitfire on the kitchen table as we all did was my father came up to me and said;
"The Merlin aero-engine is the best sounding engine you will ever hear", I agree dad.

So this is for you dad, thank you for what you did and went through.

(I initially thought dad went for 4 years now I know it was only 3 but that is not like some of our boys who are still on patrol 79 years later. RIP)