Australian book features war letters of local interest
Letters written by Major Geoffrey McLaughlin, whose family roots are in Mullingar, have been published in a new book.
‘Dear Em, Major Geoffrey McLaughlin’s letters to his family 1914-1917’ contains words such as these:
“A couple of days ago some men up in the Lone Pine trenches could see more Turks working away at a trench mortar, and the Turks caught sight of them.
“The Turks were not carrying rifles at the time or they’d have had a pot; as it was they waved at our boys cheerily and went on fixing up their mortar.”
Major McLaughlin MC wrote the letters to his family during his service with the Australian Imperial Force in the First World War .
His father was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of NSW and his sister was among Sydney University’s first female graduates.
He was called to the bar in 1913, but the following year, he was among the first to enlist in New South Wales and on October 18, 1914 he sailed on SS Argyllshire with the Field Artillery Brigade’s Battery 1st, Sydney’s own.
With the title ‘Dear Em’, Geoff’s pet name for his mother, this book of letters first lulls the reader into patriotic certainty – with humour – “the horses duck their heads under the beams and stand around the deck as if they were first-class passengers”, he writes.
But nine months later comes the searing reality of Gallipoli: “shrapnel overhead”, “if you worry you go blancmange”.
At length on the Western Front Geoff’s letters share exhausted comradeship – “shell craters rolling up and down this side of the dugout starting to collapse... dam a leak sprung over my head” – with wry humour – “the fitter wanted to see me, I thought about No. 6 gun’s springs, but he wanted my opinion of a machine he’s thinking out for catching submarines!”.
Dear Em includes 134 letters, aided by maps and photographs to provide historical context.
It is available direct from Blue Mountains Historical Society Inc, PO Box 17 Wentworth Falls, NSW 2782 (bluemountainshistory.com) or in good bookshops.