By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Mayor Angela Long proudly wore her father’s military service medals at the Noble Park RSL Anzac Day ceremony on 18 April.
The medals have been a long time coming to the family, tragically not until her father Edward William Ephriam Regan had died.
Mr Regan enlisted in Australia’s military in 1943, in the midst of World War II.
He was based in Queensland during the war.
“He never spoke about his service,” Cr Long said.
“Because he did not serve overseas he did not think that he was entitled to any medals.”
Cr Long thought the same until a conversation with the late Frank Pettit from Dandenong RSL.
At an Anzac Day march, Mr Pettit asked Cr Long why she wasn’t wearing her father’s medals.
“I told him that l did not know that he had any.
“He said that he would help me get the medals, and if the originals had already been allocated that l could get replicas.
“I was lucky enough to get the originals which l proudly wear on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.”
Cr Long’s grandfather Edward James Bede Regan served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I.
He fought mainly in France as part of the 13th Light Horse Brigade and later the 58th Battalion.
During wartime, he took extreme measures to rejoin his wife and three young children, including Edward Regan junior.
“He was court-martialled three times in the hope that he would be sent home, but that ploy did not work,” Cr Long said.
“He also shot himself in the foot thinking that he would be sent home for that but he was sent to England.
“And when he recovered from the wound he was sent back to France.”
Eventually, he was discharged from the Army in 1922.
“Like a lot of soldiers he come back with a drinking problem,” Cr Long said.
Her grandfather was allocated some land in Nar Nar Goon as a soldier’s settlement where he grew potatoes.
Awfully in 1929, he was killed at 44 when run over by a dray wagon.
Cr Long’s grandmother, with the help of her father and his siblings, kept the farm running until it was sold in 1933.
“I have no idea what happened to my grandfather’s medals,” Cr Long said.
“He passed away a long time before I was born.
“We don’t know where they are or whether he claimed them.”
