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Never the same as before he left
Jim Soorley
Jim Soorley fought with the 34th Battalion and was badly wounded at the Battle of Messines. Hit by a shell, doctors amputated part of his arm at the Casualty Clearing Station. Weeks later, in an... » read more
That chilling phrase
Carman Brothers
Port Broughton, a tiny farming community on the Spencer Gulf, sent forty-seven of its sons to the front. Twenty-one of that number were killed overseas. Amongst them were Elizabeth and David Carman’s... » read more
The joke of the Battalion
Ellis Silas
Ellis Silas wasn’t cut out to be a soldier. Slight build and frail constitution, the artist from London was first rejected for service. On his third attempt to enlist, the authorities relented and... » read more
The mystery of the Water Diviner
Thomas Murray
In 1914 Tom Murray mounted his horse and rode to the recruiting station at Meeniyan in south-east Gippsland. By March the following year, he was in Egypt, by May he was in the Dardanelles, by August... » read more
The second Count of Monte Christo
Leo Galli
To some, Galli was a patriot, an idealist, even a hero. Born in Italy, but a naturalised British subject, Galli was amongst the first to volunteer. And from the moment he put his pen to the Army’s... » read more
We were all so fond of him
Elsie Tranter
Armistice. After four years of carnage, the big guns at last fall silent. Elsie Tranter, an Australian nurse serving in a hospital near Amiens, finds a moment to scribble in her diary. She records... » read more
Written out of history
William Irwin
William Irwin was the only Aboriginal soldier CEW Bean mentioned by name in his official history of the Great War. In many ways, he was an exemplary soldier and the embodiment of the very legend Bean... » read more
A meddlesome priest
Bernard Linden Webb
At the outbreak of war, Hay’s Methodist minister, the Reverend Bernard Linden Webb declared himself a pacifist. Three months into the slaughter, his belief that war was wrong remained unshaken. But... » read more
All that is left of him
George Irwin
Private George Irwin went missing at Gallipoli in August 1915. We will never find him. Last seen plunging into the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine, George’s body vanished in the carnage. And without a... » read more
Born of the wings of high adventure
Charles Campbell
Charles Bruce Campbell was born in 1890 at Yarralumla homestead, now the site of Australia’s government house but then the seat of the Campbell family’s pastoral empire. Doted on by his parents, he... » read more