RAYMOND Terrace sisters Joan Johnson and Margaret Rissler have a luxury many others who had a family serve in either world wars do not have.
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The sisters have a copy of a journal handwritten by their father, Joseph Arnold Palmer, of his time served in WWI and WWII. The original version of the journal was bequeathed to the Mitchell Library in Sydney.
Palmer, born and bred in Raymond Terrace, was a trooper in the Light Horse brigade when he enlisted at West Maitland on December 8, 1915.
"Naturally, I wished to serve with the Light Horse abroad," page one of Palmer's journal reads.
"But I soon realised that I had to go where I was sent by the authorities and consequently found myself ordered to report to Maitland Showground where the 34th Battalion was being formed."
Palmer became a private in C Company of the 9/34th Battalion.
JOURNAL EXCERPT: "In the following pages I try to describe my life as soldier in the A.I.F. My total active service of two years, ten months abroad took me to many strange places. I mixed with the greatest, finest and best men that can fall to the lot of any man to mate with and being only a boy of nineteen years when I sailed the things I saw and the lessons I learned of life in all ways has often stood me in good stead in the year that have passed since the Great War ended on November 11 1918."
- No 886 Private J A. Palmer C. Coy 34th Batt. 9th Brigade Infantry A.I.F
After "two years, ten months abroad" including travelling to England for training and France where he fought in the July 1917 Battle of Passchendaele and the Ypres Salient, Palmer was discharged in 1919.
Palmer enlisted in 1941. He was promoted to corporal where he served as quartermaster at a military base in Nowra.
