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Of the 62,000 Anzac soldiers who died in the Great War, over one-third are still listed as ‘missing.’ After the war ended, families still sought answers about their dead and missing loved ones. Consequently a slow trickle of Australian pilgrims to Gallipoli started in 1920. In 1922, a party of about 80 pilgrims travelled by…
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The controversy surrounding Charles Jagger’s ‘Brutally Confronting’ sculpture Nestled in the Shrine of Remembrance’s pristine gardens in Melbourne is Charles Sargeant Jagger’s bronzed sculpture of a battled-hardened soldier. The sculpture is simply known as ‘Wipers’ in reference to the front-line soldiers’ often-garbled enunciation of the wrecked Flemish town of Ypres. The grim sculpture has been…
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The Rarest of PhotographsThis iconic yet tragic photograph captures the senselessness of the Battle of Passchendaele. It shows exhausted, wounded and dead Australian soldiers near Broodseinde Ridge after an attack on 12 October 1917. This photograph has been published in various forms; understandably, often with the dead soldiers cropped from the shot. But what makes…
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Even though the Battle of the Somme ended 108 years ago today, the iron harvest from the surrounding fields continues. Today the French Department of Mine Clearance still recovers about 900 tonnes of unexposed munitions every year. Approximately 630 French minesweepers have died handling such munitions. When General Douglas Haig closed down the offensive on…
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The Unknown British Warrior interred in Westminster Abbey in 1920 was meant to honour the whole Empire’s missing. Yet, Australians were divided about whether or not their government should repatriate its own unknown soldier. ‘London is the seat of the British Empire,’ reasoned one veteran, ‘and I think that Australia should be content to know…
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In 2010 the Australian War Memorial retrieved 305 dusty cardboard boxes from its archives. In these boxes were 32,000 files – each containing the harrowing correspondence between the Australian Red Cross inquiry bureau and an anguished family of a missing soldier. What was remarkable about the bureau’s letters to families, was that tens-of-thousands of them…
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Emma McQuay always believed that her son George would return home from France, even though he had been listed as missing since 1916. When the war ended, Emma visited the docks and searched the faces of the homecoming soldiers hoping to see George. Emma attended every Anzac Day service. As she watched the veterans march…
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Two incidents compelled me to research the Great War’s missing. Firstly, standing beneath the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres that lists 55,000 missing British Empire troops. I felt numbed and unable to penetrate the endless lists to connect with an individual name. And secondly, reading a 1926 article about a French father who climbed the…
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In early June 1915 Reverend Mr Langley walked from his St Mary’s vicarage in Caulfield to an unfamiliar Currall Road address in Elsternwick. He opened the picket fence gate, walked up the path and knocked on the door. Sixty-five-year-old widow, Mary Reid, answered the door. Langley guided Mary into a room, sat her down and…
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The absolute challenge of working full-time and writing part-time is time management. Every minute devoted to writing must be productive. Here’s what works for me: 1. Set non-negotiable blocks of time for writing. I have four blocks of time per week when I write. These times are typically late evening or early morning so I…