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...
View ArticleJohn 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...
View ArticleSapper 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...
View Article2nd 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...
View ArticleTrooper 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...
View ArticleThirsty 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...
View ArticlePrisoners 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...
View ArticleVera 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticlePrivate 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...
View ArticleClaiming 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,...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticlePattie 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...
View ArticlePrivate 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...
View ArticleState 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...
View ArticleGeorge 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleThe 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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