News Corp Australia will publish The Lost Letters from the Anzacs of Gallipoli tomorrow in an eight-page special across its state and regional mastheads.
More than 100 years after they were written, Australians will be able to read first-hand accounts from soldiers across the ranks, revealing the Anzacs as they actually were.
The handwritten letters, kept safe by the Australian War Memorial, were sent home to family members, and have been transcribed for this eight-page special on ANZAC Day.
Peter Blunden, national executive editor, said: “The Gallipoli letters provide a deeply personal and poignant insight into the courage of Australian troops on the frontline.
“It’s truly remarkable that it has taken more than 100 years for these heartbreaking Anzac letters from the trenches to surface.
“They make compelling and inspiring reading for all Australians this ANZAC Day.”
The diggers’ tales include Arthur Blackburn’s description of the 10th Australian Infantry Battalion’s Gallipoli landing in a letter to his brother, dated 3 June 1915, and brigadier Harold Edward ‘Pompey’ Elliott‘s account of the horrors of the battlefield to his wife.
General John Monash was just as open in his letters to his wife. In a letter penned on the eve of the landing, he grappled with the prospect of his death, saying his “one regret” was the grief that it would cause his family. But “with the full and active life I have had, I need not regard the prospect of a sudden end with dismay,” he wrote.
The Lost Letters will be published tomorrow in The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail and The Advertiser, as well as Cairns Post, Gold Coast Bulletin, Townsville Bulletin, The Mercury, NT News and Geelong Advertiser.