© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Planespotters on the job in World War 2

ONE of Australia's military problems in World War 2 was trying to keep track of the movements of large numbers of aircraft over the giant land-mass. Planes, both friendly and hostile, crossed the skies at all hours, and it was important to try to keep tabs on as many of them as possible. A big part of the solution was the Volunteer Air Observers Corps, an organisation of thousands of civilian men, women and children who spent untold hours in observation posts they built on top of houses, on handyman-created towers in backyards, in the middle…

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Pozieres 1916: hell on earth under shellfire

This is an excerpt from our book, The Hunter Region in The Great War. After the slaughter of Fromelles, where the Australian 5th Division had been critically weakened in a failed “feint”, the main British attack on the Somme awaited an Australian contribution. The British attack had gotten off to a bad start. The artillery bombardment before the infantry attack didn’t do the damage the British generals had hoped for, so casualties on the British side were extremely heavy. About 20,000 died on the first day, with many more wounded. But the British, committed to trying…

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A Mesopotamian campaign album

Part of the pleasure of collecting old photographs and negatives is the challenge of trying to reunite stray pictures and collections with their stories - as far as it is possible. This collection of negatives was bought at an antique fair in the Hunter Valley some years ago and sadly was accompanied by no information. I quickly ascertained that it came from a person who had been involved in the Mesopotamian campaign of The Great War. This was clear because some of the negatives were actually labelled as Kut el Amara, 1917. This was the scene…

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