This year, I was chosen to be a Shrine of Remembrance Youth Ambassador. As a youth ambassador, I am expected to inform both my community and my school of the happenings of World War One and Two as well as continuing on the legacy of the ANZAC Forces.
This school holidays, I was asked to help run a program called ‘Dogs, Dolphins and Donkeys’ for children aged 4-10. This program is about learning what animals did in the theatres of war.
When I ran the first workshop, I got into conversation with a mum (who was from New Zealand) who had brought her two sons to the program. We got talking and she shared with me two amazing stories of her great-grandfather and her grandfather who fought in WW1 and WW2.
The first story she told me was about her great-grandfather who fought at Gallipoli. He was apart of the ANZACs and he had a donkey. He was a stretcher bearer who also used a donkey to transport wounded ANZAC’s to hospital ships. He worked alongside John Simpson Kirkpatrick and the most amazing thing is the famous painting of Simpson and his Donkey that she recalls being told that it is actually of her great-grandfather.
The other story was of her Grandad. He was deployed to Crete and after fighting there, was taken Prisoner of War by the Germans. This is where the story takes a surprising turn. For some reason, the German officials in charge of his group liked him and allowed him to set up a laundry business for the Germans. He was even paid! By the time he was liberated, he had earned quite a bit of money and went back home to New Zealand with cash in hand.
Information about the Battle of Crete: The battles were fought from the second week of May, where German airbourne troops attacked the allied divisions. By the end of May, hte resistance had broken down and the Germans took small groups of allied soldiers prisoner. (Info found at https://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/crete.asp )
These stories that were told to me were very facinating and being able to share stories of family members (especially her grandfather) must have being very hard and I thank her for sharing those stories with me.
For info about the Shrine of Remembrance: http://www.shrine.org.au/home
Important: I have recieved verbal permission for this to be posted.
The Thoughts of a History geek 
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