String puzzle taken from an injured female Chinese soldier : Private D H Wilson, 2 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment

Cast aluminium representation of an upper torso with a head and pair of arms with raised fists. There are holes cast into the mouth and both fists and a string is wound through them with a pair of washers threaded onto the string. The reverse is flat.

Related to the Korean War service of 3/1456 Private Donald Hugh Wilson, born Sea Lake, Victoria on 9 April 1929. Wilson served in Korea with 2 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2 RAR) from 25 February 1953 until 11 February 1954. Soon after his arrival in Korea, Private Wilson was a member of a small party from 2 RAR on patrol five miles north of the 38th Parallel, sent to investigate reports of a group of injured North Korean and Chinese soldiers who had been caught in a gully by UN mortars. Private Wilson was disarming one particular Chinese of his Luger when he realised he was dealing with a woman, not a man. The woman was badly wounded, having lost her right arm in the mortar attack, and Wilson tried to offer assistance by using one of his bootlaces as a tourniquet and offering her some cigarettes and a lighter. Knowing she was dying, she gave him her wallet which contained money, photos, her diary and letters and a tobacco ration card, a tiny perfume bottle and her fountain pen, and asked him to tell her family what had happened. The wallet also contained a German Army Officer’s cap badge from the Second World War and she explained to him that her father had fought in the Russian Army against the Germans and had souvenired the badge. Wilson later arranged for a Chinese friend to contact her family with the details of her death. This string puzzle - possibly Greek - was amongst the material that she gave to Wilson.