All stories

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

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