Skip to main content

The Australian War Records Section (AWRS) Trophy Store at Peronne, 1918. Image courtesy Australian War Memorial.

  • Claude Bertie West dies of wounds sustained in the Second Battle of Bullecourt
  • Army officer John Treloar forms the Australian War Records Section in London. The AWRS’ mission is to gather war records and relics. By 1919 the section acquires almost 25,000 objects, as well as paper records, photographs, film, publications, and art works, all of which are brought back to Australia. The Australian War Records Section continues to collect artefacts to this day.
  • The Leader reports that Maurice Walter Finch has been killed in action. Maurice Finch Killed
  • Charles McMurtrie arrives in Sydney, having been invalided home from the war. Pte C McMurtrie
  • Sir Neville Howse thanks Orange City Council for their congratulations on his recent knighthood. Sir NR Howse VC CB KCB
  • A meeting at the Orange Town Hall concludes that it is inappropriate for schoolchildren to celebrate Empire Day on 24 May with a picnic; a parade in front of the Town Hall is more fitting. Empire Day to be Celebrated in Orange
  • Japanese cruisers HIJM Chikuma and Hirado arrive in Australian waters to bolster naval defence, given that the majority of the RAN’s warships are serving overseas in the North Sea and Mediterranean, with only HMS Encounter patrolling Australian waters
  • Italian troops on the Southern Front capture 4,021 prisoners in the last two days’ advance on Carso and Vodice
  • General Jacob Louis Van Deventer succeeds Major-General Sir Arthur Reginald Hoskins as Commander-in-Chief of British forces in East Africa