Letters and Stories

Read the stories of the brave men and women who went to war

and their connection to the region.

Hamel

Hamel was a small town but its capture by the Australians inspired the Allies on the Western Front.

August 6 - Major Chapman killed by shell-fire

The Maryborough man who was the first Anzac to step ashore at Gallipoli.

1917 - No kin left

William Harold Wilson, who was accepted for active service yesterday, enlisted under most remarkable circumstances.

Wonderful endurance and self-sacrifice

Before the war, I never dreamt that just average men could do so well.

Changing Attitudes

A shift in attitudes to failed leadership and a valiant enemy

Fromelles

‘The stock of a thousand butcher-shops’

6800 Australians killed

In the fighting around Pozieres, the British 48th Division lost 2844 casualties from 16–28 July and 2505 more from 13 August.

Lone Pine lives on in legends

Would the real Lone Pine please stand up?

The Nek

Below to the right lay the Australian trenches at The Nek, the narrow strip of flat land about the size of a football field.

Good god Bill, what's happened to my brigade?

The full horror of the sacrifice of the 5th Division at Fromelles sunk in slowly in Australia.

Disease, heat and flies

As the summer swelter set in, the Anzacs cursed billions of flies drawn by unsanitary conditions.

It is not necessary to leave now. Les Australians will hold them.

Fleeing in the face of the German offensive of 1918.

My nerve is completely gone

L/Cpl J. F. Kerr: Just a few lines to let you know I am safe.

A chap's nerves soon get a bit unstrung after he has been here a bit

The year 1917 is considered the most costly for Anzacs.

On the loss of your son James

Dernancourt, a village on the River Ancre in France, was the scene of desperate fighting during the German offensive.

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