Copy of Louis Willyama Avery's war diary, 16 October 1914 to 8 April 1918. The original diary was written on numbered pages 7-137 and may be incomplete.

Read a PDF of this diary:

Part 1: 16 October 1914 - 17 February 1917 (3.1 MB)
Part 2: 18 February 1918 - 1 October 1917 (3.1 MB)
Part 3: 2 October 1917 - 8 April 1918 (4.2 MB)

Louis Willyama Avery was born on 15 July 1891 in Broken Hill, son of Louis Henry Mayers Avery and Mary McKie (married in Adelaide 24 June 1890). He was educated at the Central School, Broken Hill from 1897 and went to school in Dumfries, Scotland in 1900. He was Dux of South School, Broken Hill in 1906, then attended St Peter's College, Adelaide 1907-1908. From 1909 to 1913 he studied an Associate Engineering course at the S.A. School of Mines in Adelaide before working for the Sulphide Corporation in Broken Hill but was laid off after only a few months due to a coal strike. He enlisted in the 3rd Field Company Engineers, 1st Division AIF in August 1914, served on Suez Canal defence, January to February 1915 before taking part in the Anzac landing in April that year. He served in France on the Somme and at Ypres, and did officer training in England in 1917 before returning to France in 1918, where he was awarded the Military Medal. After discharge from the Army in 1919 he started with E.Z.O., Melbourne as a draughtsman, then went to work in Tasmania as engineer at Risdon and Burnie. He retired in 1953.

View Avery's AIF service record [National Archives of Australia]

Beaumont, Joan. Broken nation : Australians in the Great War, Sydney, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2013

Carlyon, Les. The great war, Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia, 2006

Cochrane, Peter. Australians at war, Sydney : ABC Books for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2001

Gammage, Bill. The broken years : Australian soldiers in the Great War, Ringwood, Vic. : Penguin Books, 1990

Kent, David. From trench and troopship : the experience of the Australian Imperial Force, 1914-1919, Alexandria, N.S.W. : Hale & Iremonger , 1999

Luckins, Tanja. The gates of memory : Australian people's experiences and memories of loss in the Great War, Fremantle, W.A. : Curtin University Books, 2004

Macdougall, Anthony. Australians at war : a pictorial history, Nobel Park, Vic. : Five Mile Press, 2002

View National Archives of Australia content relating to Louis Willyama Avery on their Mapping our Anzacs website

Extracts from Louis Willyama Avery's diary feature on A World Away - South Australia's War, a website published by History SA

1918 Australians in France [previous exhibition from Australian War Memorial]

AIF Database: Australian Anzacs in the Great War 1914-1918 [Australian Defence Force Academy]

Anzac Day Commemoration Committee (Queensland) See: History: World War 1

Australians at War [Department of Veterans' Affairs]

Australian War Memorial See: Australians at War: Australian Military History Overview: First World War 1914-1918

Australian Army History Unit [Department of Defence]: See: History in focus [several sections about World War One]

Official history of Australia in the war of 1914-1918 [Australian War Memorial]

RSL Virtual War Memorial

Victorians at War - Oral History project [Department of Veterans' Affairs and State Library of Victoria]

World War I and its Aftermath 1914 - 1921 [New South Wales High School Certificate (HSC) online]