By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
MARIE Bennetti vividly remembers sitting by her father’s side listening to his tales of survival as a prisoner of war.
Those memories are all she has left, after thieves ransacked her Cannons Creek home, making off with her father’s war diary.
Thieves stripped the family of close to $30,000 worth of jewellery and collectables, but it’s a small paperback POW diary, belonging to English WWII veteran, Robert Irwin, that keeps Marie up at night.
“Dad always said it was the ‘notepad’ as he called it, that kept him going, once he escaped the Italian prisoner of war camp,” Marie said.
The Bennetti family were in the midst of moving house when their Bluff Road property in Cannons Creek was targeted.
“It’s so cruel,” Marie said of the break-in.
“My dad’s war diary is of no use to them and what hurts the most is the thought that they have thrown it away in the bin, because it doesn’t belong there.”
Marie had kept her father’s POW diary in a safe in her bedroom, along with his infirmary logbook and wartime ID documents.
“They don’t know the significance of what was in that plastic bag and they wouldn’t care – in hindsight I should have given his diary to a museum,” Marie said.
Robert Irwin was a soldier in the Green Howards Yorkshire Regiment, a part of the King’s Division of the British Army.
Fittingly, he died in Redcar, England the home of the Green Howards, in 1983. Their flag was draped over his coffin.
With six siblings, Marie felt honoured after her mother, Bella, gave her the treasured family heirloom 15 years ago.
“My Mum gave it to me because I lived in Australia, Mum said that Dad would have wanted me to have it, because my youngest sister and I would sit on the floor next to his chair and listen to him read stories from his diary,” Marie said.
“Mum would cook him up a whole chicken of a Sunday afternoon and he’d give us a chicken wing each – I still love the taste of a chicken wing today.”
Robert Irwin suffered inside two POW camps from the age of 23, during his two stints at war.
But it was his Italian escape which was lucky enough to be documented with a pad and pencil.
“His diary would have originally been about 50 pages long and it detailed his survival through what he called ‘Toscana’ and that he ate frogs, took refuge in a barn and hid from the owners where he ate the chickens’ eggs,” Marie said.
The Bennetti family, who had called Cannons Creek home for four years, now reside in Junction Village and said they had taken their eyes off their home for one night, on Wednesday 3 February.
“My son had been in a car accident and wrote his car off – we were taking care of him at our new home when we were burgled,” Marie said.
“I don’t care about the coin collection, the stamps or my jewellery – just my dad’s diary, you can’t put a price on it, you can’t replace what’s in it.
“Dad told us his notepad was his connection to home while at war, he was hoping he could use it to help us relate to what he had been through and understand his bouts of malaria.”
Robert Irwin had sketched the Green Howards crest in his diary, with his wife’s name, Bella, etched in it, which was photographed by his local newspaper in north-east England upon his return from war.
“I’m heartbroken and I just want it back – my most treasured item was that diary, nothing has a value to me anymore and I’m selling off anything of worth to me because I’d rather do that than have it stolen,” Marie said.
Anyone with information about the break-in or on the diary’s whereabouts is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or drop the diary in to an RSL branch.
Marie Bennetti pleas to have her dad’s prisoner of war diary returned.
