Pensioner Col Hoad, 91, uses savings to honour Tumut's WWI heroes

'We're doing soldiers' and 'Doing soldiers' meant formatting the book. And then he would stay for tea, that was part of the deal,'' she said.

Mr Hoad, a retired businessman, used his savings to self-publish the book, which he says is part protest, part tribute to the 87 men who all had an association with Tumut and all served in World War One.

Mr Hoad, who signed up with the Royal Australian Navy in 1944, towards the end of World War Two, has put his heart and soul into the book. It honours young men, like him, who were born or raised in Tumut but who instead were all "destined to surrender their lives on the battlefields of the Dardanelles,  in the dust of Palestine and in the mud on Flanders fields''. Or, in some cases, died in much more mundane ways after their arrival back home.

"I'm the luckiest person, I'm just so fortunate and I'm giving my hard-earned cash, what's left of it, back to the community in this form,'' he said, of the considerable book.

Mr Hoad, well-known in his home town for past work including running the local swimming pool, was first inspired to write the book on Anzac Day, 2013.

His brother Walter told him, as they were passing the cenotaph at the Tumut RSL Club, that they had a relative listed on it. "Why don't you look him up at the War Memorial?'' Walter asked Col.

"I put the project into the 'too long go', 'I'm too old' and 'it's too damned hard basket'," Mr Hoad said.

"Then I returned to the Bupa Aged Care Facility for the easy life of an old man living in care.''

A year later, acquaintances told him the story of another Tumut digger. He couldn't ignore it and he started investigating.

Mr Hoad decided to contain his brief to soldiers who were from the Tumut district or enlisted from there and the result is an intricately researched dedication to each of the 87 men, from Corporal Robert Usher who was shot on May 1, 1915 at Gallipoli to Private Harrie Jemmett, an absconder who died on a train between Melbourne and Sydney on April 25, 1919, during a scuffle with an armed guard.

Mr Hoad sees himself as only the facilitator of the stories, which are eerily told in the first person, snippets of the stories drawn from diaries and official records at the War Memorial and National Archives.

Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson wrote a foreword to the book, saying it "captures the almost-forgotten stories of a proud country town and makes an important contribution to our understanding of local history, our understanding of regional sacrifice and our commemoration of the ANZAC spirit''.

"Importantly, it captures not only the soldiers' wartime service but also the grief, anguish and sadness felt by their families half a world away," Dr Nelson wrote.

As well as giving voice to the stories, Mr Hoad was motivated by a sense of frustration.

"The book is born out of an old man's protest against his community and its lack of honour and respect shown to its war dead over the past 100 years,'' he said.

"Tumut is unique within comparable rural towns within Australia, in so much that there is no war memorial or public place where the town's war dead are listed.

"There is a cenotaph which recognises members of the services as bodies of men and women who served. The conflicts of the past 116 years are recognised as theatres of war, but none of those who served and died are named.''

Tumut Mayor James Hayes, a former history teacher, said he was just as passionate about honouring the past but denied the community was immune to the issue.

"Of course we care,'' he said. "I understand where he's coming from and he's probably as frustrated as I am.''

Mr Hayes said erecting a full list of Tumut's war dead was "something we definitely want to do''.

He said a statue of the town's Victoria Cross recipient, Private Jack Ryan would be unveiled in Tumut on September 30, the 100th anniversary of the day the labourer won the award for bravery. He led an attack on the Germans in France at the Hindenburg Line, using bombs and bayonets, enabling a critical trench to be retaken.

Wounded in the attack, Ryan survived and returned to Australia, passing away in Melbourne in 1941 as the result of pneumonia.

A statue of Ryan will be erected in Richmond Park in Tumut. Mr Hayes said the statue cost "around $80,000'', financed mainly through grants. "We could have got it cheaper had we got it from China but we decided to use an Australian foundry, which we thought was reasonable,'' the mayor said.

Mr Hoad said he wanted Tumut's other war dead to also be remembered. Mr Hayes said the statue was representative of all lives lost in the Great War. But Mr Hoad is not satisfied.

"My protest is fed by the knowledge that my Tumut community is about to further honour Ryan with
the erection of a $100,000 statue of this soldier in a public place within the town, yet still failing
to recognise any of the 120 who have given their lives for their community and country over the
past 100 years, the latest being a soldier killed while serving in Afghanistan,'' Mr Hoad said.

"My plea is, 'Are we a society so bereft of dignity that we honour an award mired in so much controversy yet at the same time fail to recognise that death is eternal? Or, is there no longer any meaning to the 2000-year-old
words, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends'."

Copies of No Greater Love: Tumut's Lost Sons of the Great War are available from the Australian War Memorial shop, via the book's Facebook page or by emailing nogreaterlov@westnet.com.au.