19 August 2008 by Amanda Rebbeck.
Personal Stories, The England to Australia Air Race
Captain Cedric Howell was one of Australia’s greatest fighter pilots. Initially serving as a sniper with No. 46 Battalion he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in March 1917; part of the original group of 200 Australians recruited from the AIF. He joined No. 45 Squadron, RFC and saw active service with this unit in France and Italy.
Howell claimed nineteen victories during his active service and received the Distinguished Service Order, Military Cross and Distinguished Flying Cross for his skill, gallantry and determination as a patrol leader. On one occasion he took on a formation of fifteen enemy machines, destroying four of them and bringing another down out of control. Two days later he destroyed another enemy machine and on the following day he led three machines against sixteen enemy scouts, destroying two. It was for these events that Howell was awarded the DSO. read on
15 August 2008 by Libby Stewart.
News, Battle of Long Tan, Vietnam
Vietnam Veterans Day is commemorated on 18 August every year. The day was originally known as Long Tan Day, chosen to commemorate the men of D Company, 6RAR who fought in the battle of Long Tan in 1966. On that day, 108 Australian and New Zealand soldiers fought a pitched battle against over 2,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in a rubber plantation not far from the small village of Long Tan. The Australians prevailed, but only after fighting in torrential rain for four hours. They were nearly overrun, but were saved by a timely ammunition resupply, accurate artillery fire from the nearby Australian base, and the arrival of reinforcements by armoured personnel carrier. Eighteen Australians lost their lives and 24 were wounded, the largest number of casualties in one operation since the Australian task force had arrived a few months earlier. After the battle the bodies of 245 enemy soldiers were found, but there was evidence that many more bodies had been carried away. read on
08 August 2008 by Kerrie Leech.
Collection, From the collection, Personal Stories, First World War, Private Records
Studio portrait of Tom Richards in 1917 (from Gold, mud 'n' guts by Greg Growden).
With Olympics fever upon us, I was prompted to look through the Memorial’s collection to see what material we held on Olympians. One collection in the Private Records area caught my eye. It was created by Lieutenant Thomas James Richards, MC who won a gold medal for rugby at the 1908 London Olympics. Before joining the Army, Richards played rugby first in Queensland, then in South Africa and England. read on
18 July 2008 by Peter Burness.
News
The tragedy of the missing at Fromelles resonates once more 90 years after the battle. In June 2008 a further search for bodies began. It was initiated by a Melbourne school-teacher, Lambis Englezos. He was one in a group who became increasingly convinced that there were Australian and British bodies that had been buried by the Germans in mass graves who had not been recovered and re-interred after the war. Such claims needed to be backed up by careful research and this took some years to complete. It was hard to imagine how a large number of casualties could have been missed during post-war searches. However, Englezos eventually compiled such a weight of evidence that an official investigation was launched. read on
18 July 2008 by Peter Burness.
News
From March 1916 Australian divisions began arriving in France. Initially the troops found a pleasant land and a welcome change from sea voyages, the cliffs of Gallipoli, and the training camps of Egypt. There were four divisions, each about 20,000 men, and they were sent to French Flanders close to the Belgian border. Now, for the first time, the AIF was at the main theatre of the war.
Informal outdoors group portrait of soldiers and officers from a battalion of the 6th Brigade who were newly arrived in Flanders from Egypt. EZ0002
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18 July 2008 by Mel Hunt.
Collection, New acquisitions, Books
Australian armed forces have had a long and proud association with surf lifesaving in Australia as reflected in this copy of ‘Surf in Australia’ magazine. It contains news and extracts of ‘letters from the services’ overseas, honour rolls of members killed in action, a report on the first R.A.A.F. surf lifesaving club at Evans Head run by the No.1 bombing and Gunnery School in New South Wales along with reports of fund-raising activities and news updates from Surf Life-Saving Association of Australia clubs all around Tasmania and across News South Wales.
Surf in Australia, Vol.6 No.4, December 8 1941: RC07113
By the time this issue of the magazine was published in 1941, over 50% of lifesaving members had enlisted for service in Australia or overseas. Club membership and funding was struggling due to the large number of members enlisting and from the considerable efforts of the clubs to provide comforts for those of their members who were in the fighting forces.
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15 July 2008 by Aaron Pegram.
News, Photographs, Roll of Honour
Over the past few months the Memorial has been increasing its efforts to acquire photographs of men and women who died on active service whilst serving in the Australian military forces. 102,000 names appear on the Roll of Honour, and where possible, the Memorial has been trying to put faces to names by acquiring photographs of these men and women to link to their online Roll of Honour records. Over the past three months, the Memorial’s Photographs section has received over 2,000 public inquiries regarding the Roll of Honour project, resulting in the offer of 1,800 photographs.
Recent acquisitions over the past few months have uncovered some incredible stories of Australians during wartime, and tell the true nature of loss and sacrifice througout Australia’s military history. Many recent donations have been photographs of those who died on active service during the First World War. Either forgotten over the years, not known at the time, or far too distressing to inform bereaving loved ones, revealing these personal stories involves a thorough examination of the historical record, and goes far to extend the commemoration of the fallen to beyond the bare minimum record of a rank, name, unit and date of death. read on
09 July 2008 by Di Rutherford.
Collection, Maps
Prisoners in German POW camps were very resourceful. My favourite items to have come out of POW camps in Europe are the maps they made for escape attempts. Early in the war men would draw their maps by hand, but this took a long time and at the end you would have only one copied map. If many prisoners were trying to escape it would take too long to make all the maps they required - especially for large escapes, like the famous “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III.
The handrawn master map and a copy made by Jack Millett in Oflag IVC, Colditz.
One quick and easy method to create many copies of a map was through jelly mimeograph. Recently the Memorial acquired the collection of Jack Millett, a Western Australian man captured at Crete who later became the main map maker in Colditz. The collection included two ‘master’ maps (i.e. the handdrawn originals on waxy paper) and ten mimeograph copied maps.
I have been interested in seeing how well the theory of what I had read would work, so one weekend I got together some supplies I found around my home and did the following experiment in my kitchen. read on
06 June 2008 by Craig Berelle.
New acquisitions, News, Official records
Series AWM347 is a recently acquired collection of historical records of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). Accumulated from 1927 to 1984, these records afford a detailed and often fascinating look into the thinking that characterised Australian and Allied intelligence doctrine for over half a century.
![Monthly Intelligence Report for November 1950. AWM347, [172].](http://blog.awm.gov.au/awm/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/mir-custom.jpg "Monthly Intelligence Report for November 1950. AWM347, [172].")
Monthly Intelligence Report for November 1950. AWM347, [172].
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03 June 2008 by Di Rutherford.
Collection, From the collection, Technology
One of my favourite items at the Memorial is a tall steel and iron German camouflage tree from the First World War. During the First World War fake trees were one method used for disguising observation posts on the Western Front. This tree is from Oosttaverne Wood (also sometimes spelt Oostaverne Wood), near Messines in Belgium. We don’t know when the tree was erected in the wood, but it could have been used by the Germans up until 7 June 1917, when the Oosttaverne area was captured by the British during the Battle of Messines.
February 1918. Two Australian officers inspecting a German camouflage tree. The entrance is at the base of the tree. E04548
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