Major Fitz-Gerald and the Matter of War: An ANZAC Archive

In 1915, Major Richard Francis Fitz-Gerald was the last Australian to leave an exposed position at Gallipoli. He was awarded the DSO for that and served on the Western Front through to the end of the Great War. Everywhere he went, often while in danger, he collected materials that marked his experience - photographs, orders, his battalion’s timetable for evacuation, and a souvenir map of Gallipoli that he annotated by hand. He wrote careful comments on everything he kept, transforming public documents into personal sites of memory and retrieval. He also kept a diary for the first year of his experience, covering Gallipoli, Egypt, and France. ‘Major Fitz-Gerald and the Matter of War’ personalises the difficult position of a front-line officer by closely examining the things he carried, collected, and preserved for the rest of his life.