Delving into the family history can seem daunting, especially if there are skeletons in the closet, but this didn’t deter retired senior public servant Greg Fraser, who for the last 20 years has been researching his family’s history.

During his research, Greg says he came across six family members who had served in the military, and was so intrigued, he decided to collate their individual stories into a self-published book, titled For King and Country.

“It started off in the French Revolutionary Wars and then went all the way through to the Vietnam War,” he says.

“Probably the only major war that I haven’t found anybody involved in was the Boer War in South Africa.”

However, it was no easy task to hunt down enough information to fill a book, and Greg describes the process as involving a lot of sifting through archives, a lot of internet searching, a lot of reading, but also, “serendipitous moments” where people shared unique, primary resources with him.

“I suppose I was blessed to be doing this in the internet era,” he says. 

“The first port of call really was to get their military service records through the archives, and they’re all available online.

“And that tells you a fair bit about when they joined. It tells you a bit about what their physique was, what colour eyes they had, what colour hair, etcetera.

“And it also tells you where they fought and what units they were in. 

“Bruce Fraser, who fought in the Light Horse Brigade, or Regiment, in World War I, had a diary, and I met one of his sons, and they pulled this diary out of the drawer and it was absolute gold. 

“So I took that away and the first thing I did was scan it, and then began to go through it, and I was able to line up Bruce’s descriptions of events to the unit histories and the official history.”

Part of the research saw Greg discover two relatives who had been prisoners of war during World War II, and says reading more in depth about the experiences they lived through dramatically shifted his perspective on the conflicts.

“The two guys who were prisoners of war endured terrible suffering and one of my uncles, a great uncle, came back quite a wasted person and he struggled for the rest of his days,” says Greg.

“He died quite young really, but he was back for 16 years before he died. 

“He became an alcoholic, he found it difficult to hold down jobs, and he was a member of a strict Presbyterian family and many of them turned their back on him, and I was very moved and touched by that. 

“Understanding that for those World War II guys they had very little support.”

Greg says the other story that had a big impact on him was that of his own father who fought at Balikpapan in Borneo, which was the last action by Australian troops in the Pacific War. 

He also spent two years as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces in Japan, which were formed after the formal surrender of Japan.

“He was quite traumatised by his time at Balikpapan, and although he doesn’t say it, I’m pretty sure seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki must have had quite an impact, and I can recall when I grew up, at home, that we had lots and lots of photos of ruins,” Greg says.

“It didn’t make much sense to me as a child in those days but knowing what I know now, they were pretty horrific photos.

“My father came back and he was traumatised by the fact that he’d killed a Japanese guy.

“He’d had to bury a whole lot of Japanese by a roadside and that had a big impact on him. 

“He was a heavy drinker when I was a young person, [and] he smoked very heavily.”

Despite the intense nature of the content discovered, Greg says his relatives have been “absolutely wonderful” in assisting with the research for the book, and that many are delighted that the service of their forebears has been recorded and honoured.

He, too, says the process of writing the book allowed him to gain “a great sense of pride” about his ancestors and what they did.

Order a copy at forkingandcountry1948@gmail.com.