Sweetheart brooch : Private John Joseph Ryan, 15th Battalion, AIF

9 carat gold sweetheart brooch showing a soldier with a rifle, backed by a gold disc. Underneath the soldier is a boomerang with 'AUSTRALIA' in raised lettering. Engraved on the reverse 'Pte J.J Ryan 1893-1915'.

779 Private John Joseph Ryan gave his mother Eliza this brooch before he embarked from Australia in December 1914. Ryan had enlisted in the AIF on 22 September, aged 21. He served with C Company,15th Battalion at Gallipoli, landing in the late morning of 26 April. The rest of his battalion had landed through the late afternoon and night of 25 April, while C Company waited on board HMAT Seeang Bee.

Before he left the ship on the morning of 26 April Ryan wrote his will, leaving everything to his mother. Ryan was wounded in the face the same day and was evacuated to Egypt. He was admitted to the 15th Australian General Hospital in Alexandria on 30 April but died the next day. He was buried at Chatby Cemetery in Alexandria on 2 May 1915.

The soldier on the brooch is wearing a peaked cap. Coincidently, when Ryan landed at Gallipoli he was also wearing a peaked cap. According to the unit history, the battalion had been ordered after the ships left Mudros Harbour en route to Gallipoli, to wear peaked caps. The reason given was that the men would not be so conspicuous to the enemy as they would if wearing slouch hats.

This brooch was engraved in the 1980s with the inscription that is now on the reverse.