Memories from May Miller

Memories of wartime

By Sonia Clark

May today holding the picture she sent as a schoolgirl to an unknown soldier

Local resident Peter Miller recently contacted GC&M News about a heart-warming story involving his mum May Miller (nee Cotterill) who, as a young Australian school girl during World War II, knitted a scarf for an unknown soldier and their serendipitous meeting many years later.

We caught up with Peter and 85-year-old May at their home in Beerwah to find out a little more about this fascinating story.

May explained that during the war years school kids were often called upon to help lift the morale of Australian soldiers through various assistance schemes. One of the war time efforts involved knitting winter scarves for soldiers overseas, which May did as a nine-year-old primary student.

May said any child who could knit and wanted to help was given some khaki wool and then the children pinned their name and address to the scarves to be sent away.

Much to May’s delight, a soldier called Tom Saunders wrote back and thanked her for the scarf, to which she had also included a photo of herself. As far as May knew she was one of only a few to receive an acknowledgment letter.

“We started a correspondence which went on for about a year and then the letters stopped suddenly and I sadly presumed he had been killed. I grew up, got married and eventually forgot about it all,” May said.

Many years later in the early 1980s, May received a call out of the blue from her mother who was living in Maitland NSW saying she had received a strange letter addressed to May from someone called Tom Saunders.

The letter explained that one Anzac Day Tom had been reminiscing while sorting through his memorabilia and decided to see if he could contact the young girl who knitted him a scarf and whose photo he still had.

“It was a testimony to the local Maitland Post Office that they were able to track me down through a letter addressed to me at our original home address in Maitland as my parents had moved a few times, including out of Maitland, over the years,” May said.

May used the phone book to get in contact with Tom who it turned out lived only half an hour away from May and her husband Des.

The two arranged to meet and Tom brought along the photo that May had sent him along with the scarf.

Over the next 18 months or so, Tom and his wife became close friends with May and Des, meeting up at regular intervals. Sadly, Tom passed away on Anzac Day just a couple of years after their reunion but the heart-warming story of a chance connection lives on with May who has generously shared it with GC&M News readers.