Pain and grief took a million new shapes during the Great War. One hundred years ago this week sensitive "Clio" of Melbourne's Punch sighed that "The long arm of coincidence is very strange and the travels and returns of soldiers' letters make queer stories."
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"The coincidence of which I speak occurred a few weeks ago. A Melbourne girl was engaged to a young man who left here with one of the earlier forces. After the manner of engaged couples they wrote each mail ... She had a new photograph of herself taken and a copy of this was dispatched to him at the front.
"Then presently the old truism that absence makes the heart grow fonder – of someone else – began to be fulfilled in the lady's case. Her soldier had been away a long time, and, well, somebody else was nearer.
"Then news came that the soldier had been killed. So with a clear conscience the engagement to 'somebody else' was announced. On the wedding day somebody remarked how very pale and worried the should-be-happy-bride was.
"Her sister gave the explanation. On her wedding morning she had received by post the returned photograph of herself. Her fiance had been on the move and had received it: When it finally stopped its journeying in Cairo, and the addressee's name was in the lists of killed, it was, of course opened and returned to the sender. That it should arrive on her very wedding morning was naturally regarded as ill-omened."
