Memorial Articles
The Memorial boasts a staff of subject specialists in all aspects of military history and museum practice.
Our articles and our Encyclopedia allow subject specialists to share their knowledge on Australian military history.
They also provide a way for us to take a closer look at the people and the stories behind the history and our museum collection.

The revelations of family history research
Do you have a family anecdote about something that happened to a relative or ancestor during the First or Second World War? It might be possible to find more about your relative’s service.

Volunteers find document providing fresh information on Gallipoli landings
Due to the careful attention of Memorial volunteers in the Official Records section, a previously inaccessible report of the landings at Anzac Cove of 25 April 1915 and first week of the campaign has been uncovered.

Angelica Mesiti: A hundred years
The film A hundred years is a meditation on the scars and trauma war leaves on the landscape – in particular, the Somme battlefields. Footage of the damaged landscape is combined with music and sounds from nature.
60th anniversary of sinking of HMAS Voyager II
This February, marks the 60th anniversary of a momentous event in Royal Australian Navy (RAN) history, the loss of the destroyer HMAS Voyager II following a collision with the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne II.

'The Little Digger'
It was Christmas Day 1918, and the men of the Australian Flying Corps 4 Squadron had just sat down to enjoy a sumptuous Christmas lunch when a small French boy wandered in to the airmen’s mess at Bickendorf Air Base in Germany.

The silent soldiers of Naours
It was just before Christmas, during the bitterly cold winter of 1916, when Australian Gunner Thomas Charters Forbes etched his name into the walls of a chalky limestone cave in northern France. More than a century later, his name is one of the thousands discovered etched into the walls of the subterranean city of Naours, a vast underground system of caves and tunnels beneath the plateau of Picardy.

'You can’t help but think, what could have been'
Ron Dennis never really knew his father. His father Bernard enlisted when Ron was too young to remember him and died in New Guinea on Armistice Day 1943, six days before Ron's sixth birthday.

The saddest selfie
It’s a striking image of a fresh-faced young man taking a photograph of himself reflected in a dresser mirror more than 100 years ago. Less than a year later, 21-year-old Captain "Rich" Baker was dead, one of the last Australians to be killed in action during the First World War.

'Peace and quiet is what one asks for'
It’s Spring 1915 and a lone soldier stands on guard outside a prisoners’ tent, armed with his rifle. The moment was captured more than 100 years ago in a deceptively simple, but elegant, pastel and gouache drawing by the Australian artist Iso Rae. Rae was one of only two Australian women artists who were able to depict the First World War from such close quarters.