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Australian soldiers first came to the Western Front in 1916. They had endured eight months of bloody stalemate in the Gallipoli campaign and were proud of what they had achieved in the face of defeat. The Gallipoli veterans were hardened by their experiences on the peninsula. They had learnt to fight and were keen to test their mettle in the “real” war against the Germans. Their reputation for stubborn determination and reckless bravery travelled with them from Gallipoli and, back home in Australia, the Anzac legend was beginning to grow. New volunteers swelled the ranks of the AIF and the force doubled in size. By the time the AIF arrived in France, in the spring of 1916, the war had been raging for almost two years. Two massive armies faced each other in a network of trenches stretching from the Belgian channel ports to the Swiss border. A million men had already died to gain a few miserable kilometres of ground and neither side could devise a way of breaking the deadlock. The AIF first joined the line in a quiet sector of France known as the “nursery”. Here they became conditioned to living under the strain of constant shellfire and learnt how to survive and fight in the trenches. By June 1916 the Australian divisions were manning their own sections of the front line and their war on the Western Front had truly begun. In the following two-and-a-half years the AIF would be involved in some of the most bloody conflicts of the war. These included: 1916
1917
1918
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