Corporal Gilbert Conyard was a member of the 2/3 Battalion, 16th Brigade, Service No. NX11413, POW No. 3510.
From the Australian War Memorial website:
The 2/3rd left Tobruk on 7 March, ultimately bound, with the rest of the 6th Division, for Greece. Arriving in Greece on 19 March, the 2/3rd was soon deployed north to resist the anticipated German invasion. It occupied positions at Veria on 7 April, but a succession of withdrawals by the Allies in Greece meant that the battalion did not meet the enemy in battle until 18 April - at Tempe (Pinios) Gorge. There, the 2/3rd supported the 2/2nd Battalion and blocked German movement through the gorge, allowing the unhindered withdrawal of Allied forces further south. The 2/3rd itself was forced to withdraw again by nightfall. Its activities in Greece ended with evacuation by sea from Kalamata on 27 April. The bulk of the battalion returned to Palestine, via Egypt, but one group of 141 troops subsequently fought with the 16th Brigade Composite Battalion on Crete, after the transport carrying them away from Greece was sunk.
Gilbert was born on 7 Oct 1910 in the Sydney suburb of Hurlstone Park. He married in 1929 when aged about 19. During his internment at Klagenfurt he was assigned to work in a factory where he formed a relationship with Ida, a Slovenian office employee and they had a daughter together.
Gilbert promised to bring Ida and Breda to Australia. When he returned to home, he and his wife divorced. However, he fell ill and was hospitalised. He married the nurse who tended him in hospital but the marriage never survived and he divorced for the second time. Sadly, on 31 Jan 1950 in Bondi, Sydney, Gilbert took his life. He was 39.
Some years later, a fellow POW, Geoffrey Skinner, a friend of Gilbert's, visited Ida and her daughter, Breda. Geoffrey and his wife provided friendship and moral support to Ida over a number of years and hosted Breda when she worked in England for a time.
AWM Nominal Roll
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