Miniature perfume bottle taken from an injured female Chinese soldier : Private D H Wilson, 2 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment

Small circular red and white bakelite container with separate white bakelite painted head which screws to the body. A short plaited length of white and green silk also attaches to the neck. The head is painted to represent a doll.

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, this tiny perfume bottle (hung around her neck) 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.