The Secrets of Anzac Ridge

The impact of World War I still ripples through time. In this moving and essential book, historian Patricia Skehan brings to light secret details of Anzac experiences on the Western Front.

In the annals of human history, the stakes are highest in war. And in World War I, what was at stake was the future of the world. Anzac troops, fighting and dying so far from home, were crucial to the result that shaped the twentieth century. Those troops wrote letters and diaries, materials that now form the record for the human face of war.

Patricia Skehan reveals riveting secrets from the diaries of James Armitage, a young Sydney man who enlisted on his eighteenth birthday, as well as the writings of General Sir John Monash, the military mastermind leading the Anzac troops. With permission from both their descendants, their records of the Western Front are combined in this moving portrait of catastrophic events set on Anzac Ridge, in Flanders fields.

Skehan masterfully interweaves the stories of other characters who appear in documents she discovered, including doctors, nurses, gunners and many more.

The Secrets of Anzac Ridge shows us how much humans care for each other even when the world is at its darkest, illuminating the courage and heart of those living in the trenches.

About the Author

Patricia Skehan is a founding executive member of Concord Heritage, now City of Canada Bay Heritage Society. She guest-speaks for organisations including Rotary, Probus and VIEW clubs and historical societies, and lectures for U3A. She has presented heritage talks on FM radio and has been published nationally. Patricia conducts tours at Yaralla and Rivendell estates in Concord West. Since 1999, Patricia has travelled across NSW to give over 1000 heritage talks on 16 different subjects. She travelled to Britain in 2001 and 2005, researching the Thomas Walker family's royal connections at the University of Cambridge.

In 2013, Ethel Turner's granddaughter asked Patricia to transcribe letters from Jean Curlewis to her famous mother, written while a volunteer nursing aide during the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic. Sourcing rare archives from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the Red Cross, Sydney University, Trove newspaper collections and museum sources, she found clues about Anzac secrets when given the seemingly unrelated diary of a young WW1 soldier.

Patricia was guest speaker at the Cenotaph in Sydney on Armistice Day 2020; her talk on the impact of the Spanish flu epidemic was televised nationally.

Born on Armistice Day, 1946, Patricia is married to a retired police sergeant. They live on the Central Coast.