These photos were colourised and published for the first time this year for Remembrance Day.

New Zealand troops.

Not hard to see the joy!

A 75 metre shell crater in Ypres.

Nuns, part of an order of nurses tending to graves.

And finally today, here's my granddad Percy Leo Smith and his brothers Leslie John and Gerald Peter Smith in a photo taken around 99 years, 11 months ago in London.

The boys somehow managed to get leave in the Christmas of 1917 an they met up in London - grandad and Les from the 3rd Division on the Western Front in France, and Gerald from HMAS Warrego based at Brindisi in Italy.  

Gerald Patrick Smith left home in late 1911 to go to sea on the Royal Australian Navy's first day of service.

The King had just approved formation of the RAN and Gerald was one of its first members.

When war broke out, Gerald had already been to England to sail back on the pride of the fleet, HMAS Australia.

Grerard Patrick was one of the first Australians to see action in The Great War.  

He was in the landing party that secured German Rabaul New Guinea.

The elder Smith boy Leslie John was a famous musician and the manager of Stanley MacKay's Royal Pantomime Company.   He was constantly on tour with glamorous stars throughout Australia and New Zealand.

119 Leslie John Smith went straight into action as a machine gunner on The Somme.

That's him on great grandma's Catherine's lap with great grandpa the stern school teacher watching over them.

My grandpa Percy Leo Smith was a telegraph operator at the Melbourne GPO.

Les, Percy and Gerald were solid Irish Catholic working class boys.

Waltter Geappen (my grandma's father) was a 3rd generation protestant Australian.  His boys signed up too, as you'd expect of the sons of the Victorian Government Printer and Grand Master of Melbourne's Masonic Lodge.  Here are the Geappen boys with my grandmother Myrene just before the war.

20 year old blacksmith  Les was always going to be a Sapper!

But Les hadn't attained his majority..

Les was an Australian Native just like me.

My grandfather Percy Leo Smith was first allocated to the 7th Battalion.   He first served in Cairo Egypt.

When Les went into action on The Somme, Percy transferred to the 3rd Division to be near him.

In December 1916 Les copped a shocking whack - the gunshot wound penetrating his face and eye.

This photo was taken a year later, even in the grainy sepia wash you can see the damage.

Les was a fighter.   After he came out of hospital in London he was sent to the machine gun training school at Grantham as a Sergeant Instructor where he spent the remainder of 1917.

Gerald was by then on HMAS Warrego sailing out of Brindisi, Italy hunting subs and enemy ships in the Mediterranean.  When Les suggested the boys get together over Christmas 1917 Gerald was on to it like a shot!  Somehow he got leave and made his way from Brindisi to London via the Channel - 2,200 kilometres during the war!  Not a bad effort.

And so the Smith boys were together again for one final Christmas in London, December, 1917.

Their priority mission was to get the photo to send back home to their mum Catherine in Richmond.

Imagine her excitement going to the letter box in Sherwood Street Richmond with the two girls to see her 3 boys together!

Here's Catherine with the two girls after the war - granddad has written "my best pals" on the top of the photo.

I hope that Percy, Leo and Gerald had the best of times in London and partied like it was their last Christmas together on earth.   Because it was.

Les had been seriously wounded.   He had a good job in England training machine gunners.  He was part of the war effort.  But his loyalty lay with his mates and brother.

On 10 March 1918 he rejoined the 10th Machine Gun Company on the Somme.

On 30 March 1918 my grandfather saw his brother Les shot and killed in action at Dernancourt, The Somme.

There wasn't much to send home.

His effects were boxed and placed on the Barunga, formerly the German liner Sumatra which was captured by the Royal Australian Navy in Sydney Harbour at the start of the war.  Gerald Smith was there when she was captured and put into service for Australia.

He was also there on the Mediterranean Sea when a German submarine torpedoed her and sent the ship and his brothers earthly effects to the bottom of the sea.

I wonder if Catherine knew the little trinkets left to her by her son were on Barunga when she read about her sinking?

There was no homecoming for the dead in World War One.

Grieving mothers were asked to pay for a copy of the gazette entry recording the headstone details of their dead boys.

But a mother's love for her son never dies.

When the Australian men came home the official historian Charles Bean's first order of duty was to oversee the creation of an Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Today, new generations of Smiths can see the name of 119 Smith, Leslie John in bronze on the Roll of Honour.

A few years after the war, Catherine Smith received a polite note from the official historian asking for details about Les.

I can imagine her tears as she wrote about the lad who won the Royal South Street Open Violin solo - at the age of 17!  And the memories of treasured letters from his tours of the major provincial centres of Australia and both islands of New Zealand with the pantomime company.

At the going down of the sun,

And in the morning,

We will remember them.

Lest we forget.