Poppies project commemorates soldiers

The red poppies are part of a light display commemorating the 98th anniversary of the end of World War I.

"For those who served on the battlefields of France and Belgium, the poppies were a familiar sight and are strongly associated with November 11 1918 - the days the guns fell silent on the Western Front," said NSW Veterans Affairs Minister David Elliot.

"I hope all those who see the spectacular sight of the illuminated sails will take the time to pause and remember the contribution of all our servicemen and women."

The tribute was suggested by Mascot RSL president Paul Graham.

The display will start at 8pm.

It's just one of the many events to mark Remembrance Day planned globally.

AUSTRALIANS can now track down the medical records of relatives who returned home from World War I, thanks to a project recently completed by the National Archives of Australia.

The three-year national project - to describe and ensure preservation of more than 256,000 World War I repatriation files - received $3.4 million government funding in 2013 to mark the Anzac centenary.

"The Archives has fully digitised nearly 5600 of the repatriation records, giving an insight into the problems faced by veterans when they returned home," said Anne-Marie Condé, National Archives senior curator.

"For many, the horrors of war never ended. Some individuals' files contain more than 500 pages of information - often revealing distressing details of their ongoing battles with illness, disfigurement and shell shock.

"Many of the digitised repatriation files belonged to Anzacs who sailed away from Albany with the first convoy on 1 November 1914," said Ms Conde. "Those men had a very long war, from the beginning to the last days."

Completed in Archives' offices around the country - including Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne - the project has gone part-way towards publicly listing and repackaging the records containing the medical, hospital and pension details of Anzacs who returned.

"Some veterans had three or more repatriation records, sometimes up to 20cm thick. However returning soldiers with no health issues or pension applications might not have a repatriation file at all," said Ms Conde.

For returning veterans whose records haven't already been digitised, families can request and purchase copies of their own relatives' files. Most repatriation case records are held in state offices where they are available for viewing in reading rooms and for the purchase of digital copies. There is a delay with records held in Canberra until July 2017 due to the ongoing relocation of records to the new National Archives Preservation Facility.

Since the records were gradually released from 2014, there has been a marked increase in people researching the files, with more than 1 million views in the past financial year.

Special collaboration in Melbourne with community volunteers and Monash University students contributed to the success of the project. Many of the stories are movingly portrayed in the university's One Hundred Stories website.

The records have enabled the Archives to make strong contributions to several major projects including One Hundred Stories and the ANU led Serving our Country project on Indigenous servicemen and women. They have also contributed to the book The Last Battle: Soldier settlement in Australia 1916-1939 by Bruce Scates and Melanie Oppenheimer.

The repatriation files complement the 376,000 World War I service records that the National Archives digitised in 2007 as a Gift to the Nation.

Information on both collections can be found at the Discovering Anzacs website: discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au

A NEW book documents the battles returned soldiers faced when returning home following World War I.

The Last Battle: Soldier settlement in Australia 1916-1939 by Monash University professor Bruce Scates and Flinders University professor Melanie Oppenheimer reveals the largely untraced history of soldier settlers who struggled to transition from the frontline to the farm as part of Australia's soldier resettlement scheme.

The book will be launched today at the National Archives in Canberra.

Professor Oppenheimer said The Last Battle draws on recently uncovered achieves to reveal very personal stories from the little studied inter-war period.

"It's often said that Australia was blooded in a war; really society was transitioned upon the veterans' return and that's a story we don't know enough about," she said.

"It's summed up by the poignant words of one veteran who said he thought the Western Front was bad, but it was nothing compared to what he had to deal with coming home."