Hotel china bowl : Sapper James Alfred Lockrey, Mechanical Mining Company

Ceramic ironware hotel china bowl, featuring an elaborate transfer design of the Hotel De La Chatellenie, Ypres in pale blue-green and a plain heavy border in the same colour, underscored by a thinner gold border. The base displays the manufacturer's in red, and three impressed markings, including the number 23. The entire bowl is approximately 6 mm thick.

Ceramic bowl recovered by 848 Sapper James Alfred Lockrey, an electrician of Glebe, NSW, born 29 November 1896, the second eldest of nine children of James Herbert and Malvina Kingdom Lockrey. Aged 19 when he enlisted on 1 February 1916, Lockrey was assigned to No 1 Mining Corps and almost immediately embarked for overseas service 19 days later from Sydney aboard HMAT Ulysses, on 20 February.

He arrived at Marseilles on 5 May 1916 and, two days later was on his way to Hazebrouck with 2 Company, 1 Mining Corps. He was transferred to the Australian Electrical and Mechanical Mining Engineer Second Tunnelling Company on 30 September 1916 and served with them for over a year before being wounded by a piece of shrapnel which lodged in his cheek on 29 November 1917 (his twenty first birthday - he later related that he was unimpressed with the enemy's timing); his mother was informed shortly after that he had been 'wounded slightly but remains at post'. He spent most of May 1918 in hospital with trench fever at Boulogne and Rouelles.

Granted two weeks leave from 23 August 1918, James Lockrey accepted the offer of a Scottish soldier, Jack MacLaren, to spend his leave with MacLaren's family in Inchture, Scotland where James met and fell in love with Jock's sister Bessie. Before his leave was over, he declared his love for her and proposed marriage. She accepted. Obliged to return to France, his war ended shortly before Armistice with an accidentally crushed foot, suffered on 20 October which kept him in hospital until late December 1918.

Probably against his will, Sapper Lockrey was invalided back to Australia aboard HMAT Leicestershire which embarked from England on 20 December and arrived Sydney 23 January 1919, without being able to return to Bessie. He was discharged on the grounds of medical unfitness on 11 March 1919 and returned to his job as an electrician with the Sydney Morning Herald.

His fiancée was able to travel to Australia as a war bride aboard SS Megantic and the couple finally married at Penshurst on 27 March 1920. Lockrey recovered the bowl from the remains of the shattered Hotel de la Chatellenie at Ypres. The hotel was located on one corner of the Grand Place at Ypres and shared the fate of the Cloth Hall, being almost totally destroyed by German shelling by 1916. Lockrey related that he was sitting in the remains of the hotel, using this bowl to eat his breakfast from when German shelling drove his from the place – he ran, still gripping this bowl (and his breakfast).