In September 1914, English author and poet, Laurence Binyon was so appalled by the casualty lists coming out of France that he penned the 7 stanza poem, "For the fallen". Little did he know that the middle, 4th stanza, would become the most remembered and solemnly cited verses in at least 4 countries. From 1921 this stanza became known as "The ode" and an integral part of remembrance services on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.

Ion Idriess was arguably the greatest adventure novelist Australia has produced, writing 53 books in a 40 year career. As a young man in the iconic Australian Light Horse he kept a diary which he later turned into his most enduring book, "The Desert Column". This is his story.

Well, who is the future famous star of stage and film that stole a soldier's heart before he went to war? Find out in this second episode on the life of Trooper Bluegum, Oliver Hogue!

Trooper Bluegum became a household name in Australia during The Great War, a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald he wrote numerous articles widely published in the press, turning these into 2 books after his semi-fictional "Love Letters of an Anzac". These letters were fake but his real love interest would become a Broadway Star and Oscar nominee. Follow him through Gallipoli and the Battles in the Holyland. But this man's fate has a modern irony and I give you a spoiler alert part way through. Oliver Hogue was an interesting man, take the time to hear the first part a look at his life and works.

Billy Sing was arguably the greatest sniper ever produced by Australia but as a Chinese Australian he was nearly denied enlistment and after the war almost forgotten. Billy died almost a pauper and alone at the age of 57. Here is his story.

The Ballad of Billy Sing is presented with the permission of Mr Jeff Brown.

The 7th and final part to the WW1 memoirs of Verdi Schwinghammer, who fought in the battles of Broodseinde and St Quentin Canal. There is no fighting in this one with Verdi sight seeing in Paris, Brussels, England and Ireland with some great observations of the immediate post era. Verdi returns home to his folks and we follow a little of his post war life. 

In this one, Verdi and 3rd Division take us through the Battle of St Quentin Canal with the Americans of the 27th & 30th Divisions, through Armistice and on to the early post war period. Of particular interest is the episode where Verdi treks through the old battlefields to find his cousin's grave and on his Aunt's request....

When some of our men went to bury the dead after the Battle of Mont St Quentin, when they were lifting up some of the dead bodies, bombs would explode and many of our men were killed this way. He laid these traps for us – placing a bomb under a dead soldier and when the body was lifted the catch from bomb would be released and the bomb exploded.

That night enemy planes came over all night long dropping bombs, and several of the men at the rear of us were killed and wounded, by long-range shells..... Sometimes one was safer in the front-line trench than in the back areas!

The Australian 3rd Division Memorial sits above the town of Sailly-le-Sec for a good reason.... "We eventually arrived at Heilly. Passed a few stragglers – Tommies – the remnants of Gough’s British Fifth Army, which had been overtaken by disaster. The citizens had evacuated Heilly before we arrived. Here we dumped our packs and belongings and got into battle order."

We were each given a tin of fruit and a tin of preserved sausages for our Christmas dinner. My pal and I were hungry, so we both opened our tins and ate half the contents for breakfast, putting the remainder in the tin on a shelf in our dugout – covering them with a board with a stone on it. The rats were very bad in the trenches and dugouts. As we were off duty, we went to sleep for a couple of hours and on waking and going to get our dinner found that the rats had knocked off the coverings while we were asleep and had eaten everything. So we had dry biscuits for our Christmas dinner of 1917.