24/04/2026
When war broke out in 1914, Melbourne brothers Brian (19) and William (23) Lyall were both keen to enlist.
Their mother disagreed, wanting to keep the family together. A compromise was reached: only one son would be allowed to join. Younger brother Brian beat William to the registration office, so it was he who boarded HMAT Shropshire to make the journey from Melbourne to the battlefields of Europe. He landed in Gallipoli on 4 May 1915, where he spent the next seven months . On 1 December 1915, still at Gallipoli, he was killed in action.
Meanwhile, his brother William did not keep the pact he had struck with his family. After being handed a white feather by a woman in Melbourne, William Lyall enlisted immediately. It was January 1915. With little time to spare before deployment, he married his longtime sweetheart, Hilda, on January 22, and was back in camp just two days later, shortly afterwards sailing for Egypt on HMAT Themistocles .
Deployed in France and Belgium, William wrote letters to Hilda whenever he could. This long-distance correspondence kept him going in the most trying of conditions, which he described, often with a wry humour or poetic phrasing. Hilda saved these letters and the RHSV now has a selection of them in our manuscripts collection.
Australia, with an approximate population of 4.5 million at the time, deployed about 349,000 soldiers. Of these, 61,966 โ that's 1 in 6 soldiers โ died in the war. Of those that did return, every single one of them carried the memories of their experiences with them for the rest of their lives.
It can feel impossible to comprehend the hardships and loss of life on the scale experienced in 'the Great War', as it was known at the time. It was the first time in living memory that the world had experienced destruction and death on such a scale. Every life lost or disrupted by their experiences was a real life, as rich and meaningful as any other. Letters like those William wrote to Hilda keep that in perspective. The numbers impacted were vast, but statistics often obscure that everyone had a name and a story.
We come together each Anzac Day to remember those men and women who fought and sacrificed in the hopes of a better future. We take this day to remember, to reflect, and to share their stories. The story of the Lyall family was repeated across the nation, each family unique but united in loss and separation.
We read William's letters and remember him, his brother, and his extended network of family and friends, all of whom were touched by their absence. William survived the war and was reunited with Hilda, but he never saw his mother again: she died in Melbourne in 1917, still waiting and praying for his safe return.
Today, we share some excerpts from William Lyall's letters. It is almost 112 years since the beginning of World War I, but there are some truths that remain.
To read these letters, please visit https://www.historyvictoria.org.au/collections-lounge/letters-from-an-anzac-gunner/
