Free Family WWI Photos and Momentoes

'18/10/16. Dear Mother, Just a few lines to let you know we embark on Friday, we are ready to go at a minutes notice,
but we will not get on the boat until Friday morning, they say [we] will be a week out side the bay before we sail,
I will write before I sail so Good Bye & Good Luck until I come back. With love from your Loving Son Bert.'.

'To Mother with best love. We have had a glorious day today off in Durban it is a very nice place
I can tell you lovely scenery and a picture to look at. From your loving son Sam'.

'To Les and Don with best love from Sam. I have not too many so Don is included'.

'To Cliff There are dozens of these everywhere here, they are pulling little carts or rickshaws as they call them around the streets
with best wishes from your brother Sam'.

The photo on the left, dated 12 June 1917, was sent by Bert from France [probably the Machine Gun School at Camiers]
to his younger sister Hilda Free. On the back Bert has written: 'just a few lines to let you know I am going up to my company
tomorrow, so I suppose we will be besdide the real thing, but it may be a month or more before we do any fighting.
The weather is pretty warm here now I know we feel it, we have terrible thunder storms here, some of the boys got flooded out
the other night again, I had the laughing side of them, talk about lightning and thunder I have never seen the like.
I will have to ring off for this time so good bye for the present. With love from your loving Brother Bert'.
He also adds as a postscript: 'This is one of our mates, only a boy'.

Although still to be confirmed, we think Bert's colleague is Gordon Roy Heathcote, an optician from Kew in Melbourne.
Gordon enlisted embarked from Melbourne on the SS Port Lincoln and did his initial training with the boys at Perham Downs.
While there he was promoted to Corporal and underwent additional specialised training at the machine gun depot at Tidworth.
He is seated on the left in the photo shown on the right which is of members of the 9th Training Battalion
at Perham Downs (AWM P08299.007). Gordon was allocated to the 24 MG Coy and proceeded overseas
on active service in September 1917. Like Herbert Adler, he was killed by a shell burst at Zonnebeke
during the third battle of Ypres.

'7/5/17 Dear Mother Sam and I have volunteered to go to France will be leaving sometime this week,
so I will say Good Bye and Good Luck just until I come back. Bert'.