Horrie and Bert went back years. In the early 1900s, when Bert was still a teenager, Horrie had encouraged him to invest his savings, garnered from work as a ‘dental mechanic’, into blocks of land. As WW1 broke out, Bert sold the land and bought a house, and in 1916 aged 19, he enlisted in the AIF, serving as staff sergeant in the ‘Dental Detail’ of the Australian Army Medical Corps, at home and in Britain.