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2nd Aircraft Mechanic Harry Nelson and the widow's fight
Four Australian air mechanics enjoying lunch at Halefield, June 1918 (AWM P10218.009)Harry Nelson, fruiterer and cyclist of McConnell St, Kensington, enlisted in October 1917, and embarked in May...
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Mystery Man: Doctor J Hughston
The Essendon Gazette of 10 June 1915, in its For King and Country column, carried the photo of a young man in civilian dress with a subheading. There was no article to explain the reference or nor...
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Thunderboxes, troops, for the use of
If you ever wondered what sanitary arrangements were made for troops in the trenches at Gallipoli, wonder no more. Rod Martin has investigated this difficult question, and found that Kensington man,...
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Sapper Douglas Morpeth of Mar Lodge
A general search around the internet for photos of Douglas Morpeth turned up this interesting photo on the Great War Forum. The photo shows a group of men who embarked as reinforcements for a Field...
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Gunner Nott, organist
Fred Nott, of Ascot Vale, was a well-known musician in Essendon and Melbourne before the war, and had left for England in January 1914 to further his studies in music at the Royal College of Music....
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The sterling qualities of Staff Nurse Margaret Leonard
Nurse Leonard on her graduation. Table Talk 21 Oct 1909 p 21Graduating at the end of 1909 from the Homoeopathic Hospital, St Kilda Road, Margaret nursed for six years before enlisting in the AANS in...
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Private Frank Archer, husband and father, died in April 1917
The twenty-six year-old blacksmith had a wife and two children to support and care for, and the initial rush to enlist after war broke out in 1914 suggested that there were plenty of eager and single...
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Letters to Lily Vale
When War was declared in August 1914, Ern Latchford was working as an Instructional Officer at the 58B training depot in Ascot Vale. Instructional Officers had been selected to train boys involved in...
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John Hunt Kelleher , a Lost Boy
John Hunt Kelleher's brother Wilfred Kelleher, who served, not with the AIF, but two prison terms at Her Majesty's Pleasure.We always expect a good yarn from Marilyn Kenny, and this time is no...
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Sapper Hermann Taylor, a casualty of typhoid, 1916
Military Infectious Diseases Hospital, Choubra, Egypt, November 1915.Hermann Taylor was performing clerical duties at the AIF Headquarters, Cairo, when he was stricken with typhoid and taken to the...
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2nd Lieutenant Vivian Garner and the Lost Plaque
2nd Lieutenant Vivian Gilber Garner was featured with the story of his service in the AIF on The Empire Called and I Answered website. The story was written by Rod Martin, whose name is well-known by...
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Trooper Cyril Kaighin - one of the 'Glorious Dead'
This is a tale of blighted expectations, told by Rod Martin. Cyril and his older sister, Mabel Mona (b. 1891), about 1900(Rodd Johnson/Greg Kaighin)Cyril was working as a clerk at the GPO in...
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Thirsty Work Crossing the Sinai - Trooper J E Quinlan of Shuter Street
Members of 3 Light Horse Machine Gun Squadron, Palestine, 1917. AWM P039631.087James Quinlan was a 19 year old labourer of 29 Shuter St, Moonee Ponds when he enlisted in January 1916. By June James...
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Prisoners of the First World War - ICRC Archives
Wahn, Westphalia, Germany. French prisoners-of-war at work (Karl Rud. Bremer & Co., Cologne, Germany, n°205)On 21 August 1914, the Central Prisoners of War Agency was created to collect...
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Vera Deakin and the Red Cross
When war broke out in 1914, Vera Deakin, daughter of Alfred Deakin, former Prime Minister of Australia, urgently wanted to do something beyond knitting socks and balaclavas for soldiers, but...
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The Disaster at The Nek
Tpr Robert Kerr, courtesy of Kim Phillips,Spirits of Gallipoli websiteAn early recruit to the AIF in 1914, Robert Kerr, a commercial traveller of Brewster St, Essendon was assigned to 8 Light Horse...
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Private Arthur Jabons Lane, no known grave
The Australian War Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux The Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme departement in France contains the names of 10,773 men who died but who have no known...
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Claiming a Brother
Having delivered ammunition supplies to the guns, unidentified members of the Australian Divisional Ammunition Column gallop past a dangerous crossroad. Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial,...
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A Dashing Australian Officer - John Mott
Captain John Eldred Mott MC and Bar (later Lieutenant Colonel), the first Australian officer to escape from captivity in Germany, taken the morning after he reached Holland. Captain Mott is wearing the...
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Pattie Deakin and the Anzac Buffet
Elizabeth Martha Anne Browne (but known as Pattie) was born at Camp Hill, Tullamarine Victoria on 1 January 1863. She was the third of the eleven children of Hugh Junor Browne and his wife Elizabeth...
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Private Yeats and the attack at Polygon Wood
Somme mud, 1916 (AWM P905380.002)Private William Yeats arrived in France in January 1917 in time to enjoy the worst winter in 40 years. A slight increase in temperatures preceded a thaw that changed...
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State school teacher wounded at Gallipoli
Private Thomas Keddie, State school teacher at San Remo.Thomas Keddie, a State school teacher, enlisted in the AIF at the first opportunity in August 1915. Like many men of his educational...
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George Young's War
Pozieres, pulverised by shelling, where George Young suffered shell shock. AWM A05776George Henry Young suffered a bit of a battering in the war. He was wounded in the foot at the Dardanelles, being...
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A letter from Rabbit Hole VIlla, Gallipoli
Typical accommodation on Gallipoli, H03942 AWMLocal AIF volunteer, George Gilchrist, of St Leonards Rd, Ascot Vale, survived the landing at Gallipoli with the 7th Infantry Battalion on 25 April...
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The Oarsmen: The Remarkable Story of the Men Who Rowed from the Great War to...
Available from libraries and bookstores.At the end of the Great War the Department of Defence was faced with the problem of repatriating tens of thousands of men from various theatres of war home to...
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