An elderly Digger who makes military patches for units has created some special ones for a young Queensland girl who has researched the history of a Maitland soldier killed in World War I.
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Trevor Brooker, 90, from Dungog, began making the military patches after he returned from New Guinea fighting the Japanese in the last war.
When he read a story in The Maitland Mercury about student Charlotte Lambert researching the history of Maitland soldier Sergeant Arnold Lambert Worboys, Mr Brooker set to work.
He has now completed a patch of the 30th Battalion, Australian Infantry, in which Mr Worboys was serving when he was killed in France on March 23, 1917.
Mr Brooker now plans to send the patch to Charlotte, a 17-year-old student from Mackay North State High School in Queensland.
“I served in New Guinea in the 2/16th Battalion – but my actual age is a bit different to the one shown in my military records,” Mr Brooker said.
“I was sent up the Ramu Valley where I contracted scrub typhus.
“I fell in a river and lost my rifle, then went to hospital to recover.
“Then I rejoined my unit and we were sent to meet the Japanese.
“Together we all managed to stop them, and I was lucky, only have a piece of shrapnel in my left leg,” Mr Brooker said.
“After the war, I married and settled in Maitland, where I worked on a dairy farm – and began making patches out of material for various units.”
Mr Brooker uses a needle and thread to make the patches and he thinks he has made several hundred.
“I made the 30th Battalion patch for the young Queensland girl researching the history of Sgt Worboys and I plan to send it to her shortly,” he said.
Ms Lambert began her research when she discovered her surname was the same as Sgt Worboys’ middle name.
She then found out he had been killed at Villers-Bretonneux in France – on the same day as her birthday.
