Project blog

I knew immediately this was how I wanted to go to war. I wanted to fly one of these aeroplanes, to get to grips with the enemy without all the sordid complications of war on the ground.

The Battle of Fromelles has been described as the worst 24 hrs in Australian military history..

Imperial German Army sign board, taken from the roadside leading into Fromelles, opposite the trenches occupied by the 5th Australian Division. Image: AWM RELAWM07383

W J A ‘Allan’ Allsop. worked tirelessly as a Stretcher-bearer behind front lines of Fromelles on the night of 19/06/16. His diary entries give a vivid, if brief account of the battle.

The 53rd Battlion suffered over 75% casualties in 24hrs at Fromelles. 3 men from Mosman did not return. The Wilson and Laing families grieved terribly. Their boys among the thousands ‘missing’ in the Great War.
One mother never got over the loss her 2 sons – she died in 1919, with a broken heart. The other, lost her only son. In 2010, the mystery that had plagued one family’s descendants for so long, was finally resolved.

Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery

Cobbers remembered: Mosman’s dead 100 years past

Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery, Fleurbaix. Photo: Bernard de Broglio