Welcoming Loved Ones Home
This ‘Welcome Home’ banner was made by Jessie Mary Middleton and her mother Alice in 1919 to welcome Jessie’s fiancée John Thomas Bracey Elderfield back to Australia from active service in France.
Banners welcoming loved ones home from overseas were common at the end of the First World War (and in conflicts since), but few have survived to this day. While it only has a few ‘Welcome Home’ banners in its First World War collection, the Australian War Memorial has many photos of the celebrations that greeted soldiers upon their return to Australia.
John Elderfield served with the AIF 23rd Infantry Battalion on the Western Front from 1915 to 1919, embarking from Melbourne aboard the HMAT Hororata on 27 September 1915, aged 21. John was wounded and gassed multiple times, and spent much time in hospital.
In May 1917, having heard that John had been hospitalised, Jessie wrote to military authorities seeking further information about his condition, describing John as “my friend.” She was frustrated in having “to wait to see his name in the lists” or to receive news from John directly.
While in 1917 it seems Jessie was describing him as her friend, certainly by the time John returned to Australia in May 1919 they were engaged to be married. Jessie and her mother Alice made the banner to be strung across the front of their family home in Fitzroy North in Melbourne.
John and Jessie were married on 18 June 1921 at North Fitzroy Church of Christ, and had two daughters.
Alexandra Biggs is currently interning with the Military Heraldry and Technology Section, and completing a Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) at the Australian National University.