During World War One, Australian troops were involved in battles in the Dardanelles, Egypt, Palestine and Western Europe. In the past, historians have dwelt on the front lines of battle and the heroic tales of the soldiers. What they discussed about the home front was the consequence that the battles and the politics of the time had on those at home. However while the front line was the Middle East and Europe, this war had a back line miles away from the front. The back line was every city, town and village in Australia. 

         "  ..... Australia knows something of the flames of war, but its realities have never been brought as close as they will be in the near future, and the discipline will help us to find ourselves. It will test our manhood and womanhood by an immediate local pressure, even though we never hear a shot fired or get a glimpse of the foe." (1) 

The people believed that they too were fighting the Germans. Every sock, boot or shirt they made was to help an Aussie hero kill another German and win the war.(2) 

 On 5 August 1914 the outbreak of the war was announced to all in Australia including a town called Yass. Yass in 1914 was a small rural town of less than 2,000 people in the southern tablelands of NSW, where fine wool production was dominant. The local newspaper, the Yass Courier carried articles on the minutia of the increasing hostilities between Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Turkey on the one hand and France, Britain and Russia on the other. Upon declaration of war Australia through her politicians announced that she was behind Britain to "the last man and last shilling." (3) The Yass Courier like all papers in Australia had access to news on the war through special wires and cables and kept its subscribers up to date, even publishing special bulletins. (4) Within the first two weeks of the announcement of war the Patriotic War Fund chaired by the Mayor, Ald. Browning had raised six hundred and sixty  pounds.(5)  The collapse of the wool market caused by the withdrawal of Britain, Italy and Germany from the market fully underlined the war for the whole district. (6) 

 Young, unmarried men from Yass wanted to fight and some of the first to enlist were Harold Williamson,(7), Rex Jones, Roy Davis, Robert Cowan, Park Shaw, George Puckett, S.J.Sprat.(8) Others too wanted to help the Empire fight the Germans. Women could not join the army and fight along side their menfolk. Only those with nursing training were allowed to go to the front and the Honour Roll published by the Yass Courier in 1917 listed Nurse Bessie Crago. All other patriotic women in Yass like Miss Mary Yeo became actively involved in organisations like the Red Cross. Through the Yass Courier Miss Yeo advertised a meeting of all ladies who wished to help in the war effect to meet at the Mechanics' Institute  balcony on Monday 17 August at 2:30 pm. The meeting was a standing room only success with over 125 people in attendance. The Mayoress, Mrs Browning was elected President and the general secretary was Miss Yeo. The representatives of all the societies were elected as Vice presidents and included Mrs Cusack, Political Labour League; Mrs Bucknell, Liberal Association; Mrs Coen, junr, Sacred Heart Society; Mrs McBean, Women's Missionary Society; Mrs Moriarty, St Clement's Sewing Guild; Miss Hill, St Andrew's Dorcas Society; Mrs Triggs, Yass Girls' Club; Mrs Wade, Children of Mary; and Miss Mote, Girls' Friendly Society. It was decided to meet every afternoon at 2.30 on the balcony which was let to the organisation free of charge. (9) 

 In the beginning of the war the newspaper was the only uncensored form of news about the war. Those soldiers in areas of conflict had to be careful what they wrote home because all correspondence had to pass the censors. A published extract of a letter from  Serg Jim Thompson says, " I cannot write you much as the censor may strike out anything he likes." (10) Families often received specially printed army postcards which let the family know that their relative was alive.  Sometimes they would receive a cablegram and then at other times a family could receive a lengthy letter which was often handed to the editor of the Yass Courier to be printed. One such letter was from Corp. Snowy Williamson in Egypt in Jan 1915.(11)  The early letters were often like adventure tales or travellers' experiences. Later letters from wounded men like Pt Roy Denning to his mother showed the dawning horror of death. (12) However by Sept 1915 the Australian Federal Govt passed a Censorship Act and only officially acceptable war news could be published. A magazine totally acceptable to the censors was The War Illustrated, a weekly English magazine. Two copies were sent by the distributors to the editor of the Courier and a short description of them appeared in the paper on the 12\11\1914. This magazine presented the war as a series of heroic dramas. Photos and drawings glossed over the awful. Battle successes were made much of and losses were short on detail. No-one in Yass, for instance, knew that Gallipoli was a failure until after the retreat. Up until then reporting led people to believe that success would happen any day. (13) 

 A censored press also meant that the adventure image of war could be prolonged and it played a part in recruitment. In War Illustrated, 30 October 1915, " the proverbial sporting spirit of Britons on the battlefield took place in a recent assault on the German trenches,...an officer kicked a football towards the German lines...shouting, follow me lads!" Censored press  also gave the community the picture that the enemy was evil and that good men had a duty to enlist and help their mates wipe the enemy out. Censorship was also used effectively by the government to push for conscription in the two referendums of 1916 and 1917. Interestingly while both referendum were marginally lost nationally...48% for and 52% against in 1916  (14)  and 46% for and 54% against in 1917 (15), in Yass the support for conscription  was 33% for and 66% against in 1916 and 32% for and 68% against in 1917  (16)  and this was inspite of the amount of space the editor allowed in the paper for the official pro-conscription articles and the editor's fiery arguments for the issue. The whole of Yass was already fully committed to the war whether they fought in the front line or fought to keep up supplies from the back line.  Also the letters from family in the battle zones would have hardly encouraged a civilian population to force young men to go and be responsible for their possible deaths. (17) 

 By 1917 there was very little general war news in the Yass Courier. Rolls of Honour were still printed and contained the words `wounded' or `dead' besides soldiers names. And the paper made every effort to write an obituary for those Yass boys who were killed. Sadly the paper could only report sometimes that a cablegram had been received informing the family of the death of their son as in the case of Pt Walter Garland who had enlisted in the Kangaroo drive of 1915. The emotional effects of worry and grief amongst those in Yass can only be assessed from the editor's delicately worded reports. In the article on Pt Garland he states that the pain of their son's death would have been lightened because the cable was delivered personally by Rev. Hulley, who was temporarily filling the pulpit at St Clement's. (18) 

 Worry, grief and patriotic fervour found outlets in  fund raising, sewing, knitting, cooking, collecting goods and books, filling Nurse Gould bags for use in hospitals, in fact in any venture which would be of use to all the troops and Yass boys in particular. (19) By February 1915 thirty-eight complete soldiers' bags and seven hospital bags had been sent away besides bags of bandages and numerous magazines and other items and a sum of one hundred and seventy pounds. 

 The Yass Courier reported that " the ladies of the Red Cross Aid Society are all hard at work on the garments most wanted by the Society, pyjamas, socks, shirts. A casual visitor to the Mechanics' balcony would be surprised at the buzz of sewing machines, the whirr of cutting out scissors, and the chatter of tongues. Working parties are in full swing all over the town, and the country is catching the infection." (20)  

 The Yass Courier reported that the children of the town were doing their bit too. "The Children's box sent to all the schools raised four pounds. The girls from the Convent were knitting socks. The Ministering Children's League and The Presbyterian Mission Band have already handed in their completed bags.The St Clement's Sunday School girls have been busy sewing on tapes and buttons at the balcony. Three little maidens ranging from eight to ten years donned the caps and aprons of waitresses one afternoon and gave a "Tea Room"; the proceeds from this amounted to two pounds and eleven shillings." (21) 

 The Red Cross Aid Society not only raised funds by collecting around the town from groups such as the workmen on the railway duplication line who donated 61 pounds, thirteen shillings and 6 pence, but also by holding dances. At one such dance the Courier went into details describing the patriotic decorations, 

  The hall was handsomely decorated and festooned with the four flags dear to the peoples' hearts at present. A large photo of our king upon an easel draped with the Union Jack and the Australian flag, with swords crossed and unsheathed, occupied the central place on the stage, while around the walls and gallery were artistic drapings of red, white and blue interspersed with tiny Union Jacks. The supper tables were also decorated with red, white and blue, large bowls of Waratah, cornflowers and Arum lilies carrying out the design still more effectively, while the gas jets were draped with ribbon streamers of the colours. (22) 

 The effort to decorate the hall in red white and blue, even obtaining frost tender Waratahs rather than making do with easily found red roses underlines the strength of nationalistic sentiment in Yass. While four long years of war were to drain people of their enthusiasm for war that sense of being proudly Australian seemed only to increase.It could be seen in the support for the Kangaroo march of 1915 when an enlistment drive starting at Wagga Wagga walked through Yass and district swelling with enthusiastic young men as it progressed towards Sydney. The Mayor, in his captain's uniform gave a farewell address to the group at the Hume Bridge, symbolically chosen to make a parallel between Hamilton Hume and the Kangaroos. Hume, the Mayor is reported as saying, had discovered the route from Sydney to Melbourne and after encountering many dangers and difficulties had "accomplished his mission and returned to settle in Yass district. They too were on their way to carve out the route to Berlin. When they had accomplished their mission all hoped that, like Hume, they would return to their native land to  spend many years of usefulness in peace and quietness and, it was sincerely hoped, in prosperity."  (23) National pride could be seen in the popularity of Australian authors like C J Dennis. Parcels to the `boys' not only included clothing, food and toiletries but also books and magazines. In 1917 C J Dennis' book, "Ginger Mick" was published in pocket editions for the trenches and it was a favourite gift judging by the number of men who carried a copy.(24) And pride of country came to the fore when the whole town celebrated Anzac Day every year from 1916.(25) 

 Towards the end of the war fund raising efforts were aimed at helping the boys, particularly the wounded and incapacitated. A group of Yass farmers donated 200 acres of wheat to the needs of the returned soldiers. (26) In 1918 the Yass district Red Cross branches decided to support a ward of four beds at the Exeter Home, 2 of the beds were funded by Yass Red Cross and the Yass branch donated 50 pounds to Exeter Homes, 31 pounds to the Prisoners of War Fund, 70 pounds to the Red Cross Sanatorium at Wentworth Falls, and 405 pounds was sent to Head Office in Sydney for the special Red Cross "Our Day", money used for Australians in need. (27) 
    No sooner had the Yass Courier received the news announcing a victorious ending to war, then  the whole town knew. The news had spread faster than a hurricane pushed wild bushfire. (28)   Soon everyone had lined the streets banging tin cans, blowing whistles and ringing bells. Out of a population of nearly 2,000 in 1918, a staggering 500 had enlisted and of that number, approximately 25% had been killed. What is also staggering is that an organisation such as the Red Cross drawing from a war time population reduced to about 1500  was able to send 7,750 articles of clothing to the Red Cross store, and raised 2,026 pounds not to mention the other items of produce and comforts. (29)

 Later, that same exciting night, at a packed Mechanic's Institute the Mayor Ald. A. Shaw, brother-in- law of Roy Denning and father of Pt Shaw, moved a resolution "expressing thankfulness to God for the victory, appreciation of the work of our soldiers and sympathy for the fallen." (30) No public mention was made of the patriotic efforts of the town and district. The failure of people at the time to publically acknowledge the war efforts of those so far away from the front line in part explains the traditional bias of historians to see the Great War as fought and won by both soldiers and politicians. Even at the special session of NSW Parliament on 5 April 1990 to mark the 75th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli, there was still no recognition made of the back line `soldiers' in every city, town or village. The unsung heroes of World War I were the mums and dads and sisters and daughters in towns like Yass who knitted, sewed, made, cooked, gave, collected, sorted, wrapped, organised, donated......... 

 The realities of the Great War became starkly clear to everyone as the soldiers returned. Not until then did the reality of death hit home. And in Yass as in every place that could muster one or more soldiers a memorial to the War and to the Fallen was erected. Yass built a civic hall, a Memorial Hall and it has since replaced the Mechanic's Institute as the town's meeting place. In the entrance to the building there is a hall of remembrance that has been added to in later years. It is not possible to be a part of the town and not understand the significance of the brass honour rolls. World War I  burnt its way into the fabric of our lives.