When Robert Towers went away to war he gave his sweetheart a small silver brooch as a token of their love.

He had made the brooch by cutting out the Australian coat of arms from the centre of an Australian florin, a coin worth two shillings.

Before he left in July 1941, he gave the brooch to his girlfriend, Lois Henriksen, and placed the outer section of the florin around his neck with his identity discs.

He told her when the two parts were together once more, the war would be over, and they would be together forever. But it was not to be.

A winch driver from Beech Forest, Victoria, Bob enlisted in July 1940. He went on to serve with the 2/29th Battalion in Malaya and was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell in February 1942.

Lois heard nothing more until 1945 when she was working with the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service in a hospital ward in Victoria, caring for ex-prisoners of war.

One of the men had been in a prisoner of war camp with Bob in Japan, and had been with him when he died of illness on 8 November 1943.

When Lois went to see Bob’s mother, she found the matching part of her florin among his carefully preserved possessions, and his mother gave it to her.

The war was finally over, and the two pieces were joined once more, but Lois and Bob would never be together again.

Read the full article: https://fal.cn/3vVH6

Images: Private Robert Towers, pictured centre, with two of his mates in a studio portrait taken in Malaya in 1941. A pendant he made from a cut out coin can be seen hanging around his neck. Private Sydney Riley (left) and Private Allan Clinch (right), both died in Malaya in 1942. P02846.001

Portrait of Lois Henriksen, who kept the pendant and brooch for the rest of her life.

Lois Henriksen’s silver brooch cut from an Australian florin. REL27148.001