A SOLDIER who bled to death while writing a letter to his family is among hundreds of World War I troopers featured in a local historian’s new book.

Andrew Pittaway’s Fremantle Voices of the Great War tells the tale of more than 3000 Fremantle soldiers who fought in the bloody conflict.

Pittaway says the most striking story is of Trooper Robert Beard, whose leg was shot in Turkish trenches at Quinn’s Post in 1915.

After the attack, the wounded soldier was put on a ship and headed to a hospital in Alexandria, an Egyptian seaport. Shortly after arrival, an artery burst and Beard slipped into unconsciousness and death while writing a letter to his family.

The letter was posted unfinished.

• Pam Caddy, whose father and all four uncles served in World War I, helped local historian Andrew Pittaway write a book on more than 3000 Fremantle soldiers. Photo by Emmie Dowling.

Inspiration to write the book came when Pittaway trekked Gallipoli’s crags in 2002 and visited the grave of Fremantle’s last soldier to die on the peninsula, Lance Corporal William Bateman.

“Unfortunately, William Bateman was decapitated by an exploding shell … at Anzac Cove,” Pittaway, 41, says.

Since the Gallipoli visit, Pittaway has contacted more than 200 descendants of Fremantle soldiers and pored over war letters, diaries and photos to piece together local stories.

• Pam Caddy’s uncle Joesph Cusack. Photo supplied.

East Fremantle woman Pam Caddy shared her family’s World War I story with Pittaway.

Her dad and all four uncles had served in the war and survived.

“Uncle Joe (Joesph Cusack) came back from the war with what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder,” Mrs Caddy says.

“They didn’t have a name for it back then.”

Fremantle Voices of the Great War ($50) can be bought from the Army Museum of WA and selected local bookshops. For more information, call Andrew Pittaway on 0417 296 009.

by EMMIE DOWLING