When soldiers had an opportunity to become tourists, they often collected souvenirs to remember their experience of service, and to provide those back home with some indication of what they had seen, as the Australian War Memorial’s extensive Postcard and Souvenirs collections attest to. However, one popular method of souveniring was pressing flowers.

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‘To points unknown: the First Al Muthanna Task Group’ is a striking example of the type of modern unit history which is being produced by Australian soldiers. It is a largely pictorial record of the tour to Iraq by the 1st Al Muthanna Task Group from April to November 2005. Lt. Col. Roger Noble, Commanding Officer of Al Muthanna Task group One, notes in the introduction that the aim was to ‘record our tour as it was, with an emphasis on the human, lighter, everyday side of the tour’.

The Memorial’s Research Centre holds an extensive collection of published ‘unit histories’ across the range of conflicts in which Australians have served from the South African War to current peacekeeping operations.

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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.

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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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.

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This will be the first in a regular program of blog posts letting people know of recent acquisitions in the Research Centre’s Official Records Collection. We hope to provide a few more updates over the next few weeks, before settling into a quarterly routine.

The gentleman pictured above is Commander Warwick Seymour Bracegirdle, DSC (Two Bars) of the Royal Australian Navy. Recently we acquired a small collection of his official papers comprising fourteen items, mostly relating to his service on HMAS Shropshire during the Second World War and HMAS Bataan during the Korean War.

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Can you imagine receiving a message that signified a momentous event in living history?

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It seems one of the most expedient weapons deployed personnel can have these days is a deck of cards. Yes, you read correctly. A common form of ephemera coming into the Memorial from those involved in recent conflicts like Iraq, are playing cards, which have been produced by Australia and the United States to reach beyond mere entertainment value into the realm of Intelligence.

 

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A sketchbook of humorous pre-First World War caricatures has recently been acquired by the Australian War Memorial. Members of the Royal Australian Artillery (RAA), located at Queenscliff, Victoria, are depicted in this work dating from 1909-1910. Referred to as the “budget” of the regiment and located in what once appeared to be an accounting book, the works were created by an anonymous artist using the name “Zif”. read on

Escape maps, medals and military insignia from an infamous German prisoner of war camp are among the latest additions to the Australian War Memorial’s collection.

The items belonged to WA-born Lieutenant JR ‘Jack’ Millet who enlisted in 1940 with 2/11 Infantry Battalion. He served in the Middle East before being captured by the Germans on Crete in May 1941.

After several escape attempts, Millet was sent to Oflag IV-C, the ‘escape-proof’ high security prisoner of war camp for officers popularly known as ‘Colditz’.

Millet was famed for producing high quality escape maps, essential documents for allied prisoners trying to escape from occupied Europe. He was one of approximately 20 Australians interned at Colditz. The last survivor of that group, he died in Perth in 1999. read on