23 May 2013

Robert Bott

Sometimes I find that research ebbs and flows as does the type of item that I return. For a while I had a purple patch of returning badges and medallions. This week it is dog tags. On Tuesday I received dog tags issued to two servicemen from Nick of Victory Badges.
The first one I looked at was issued to PA2414 Robert Leslie Bott. The PA prefix of the service number told me that Robert was a sailor and that his home port was Port Adelaide. South Australia is the worst state to conduct a record search of but I soon found via the electoral rolls that Robert spent the years after the war in NSW. Indeed, he and his wife settled in a large rural town. On a hunch I had a look at the white pages and there was a person listed with the same name and initials as Robert's wife. I cold called the number and it was the lady I was looking for. Also at the house were Robert's daughters and they listened to my explanation on speaker phone.
From start to finish this search took about 10 minutes (sorry Bill). I'm well down the track of narrowing the search for the family of the second dog tag that Nick sent. On top of that I've received a request from France to track the family of a WWI digger whose dog tag has been found at an old battle field site. I wont say anything more now but I hope that this will end up being a great story.

1 comment:

  1. The stories are always great ... I bet the family was pleased :)

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