Shrapnel and Semaphore – My Grandfather’s Diary from Gallipoli

Title: Shrapnel and Semaphore – My Grandfather’s Diary from Gallipoli

Author: Chamberlin, Jan

Condition: Mint

Edition: 1st Edition

Publication Date: 2001

ISBN: 0473076888

Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 59 pages

Comments: In the late 1990s Bill Leadley’s granddaughter, Jan Chamberlin, spent many months researching her family archives in order to be able to put her grandfather’s diary covering the ANZAC landing on Gallipoli in context. Shrapnel & Semaphore is the result and it is an amazing story of courage, faith and service based on a series of diary entries written by Lance-Corporal Walter Edmund (Bill) Leadley covering the period 25 April 1915 through to 8 December, and from 25 March 1916 to 9 September prior to serving at The Somme where he was seriously wounded and invalided out. 

The fascinating and frequently harrowing narrative is supported by family and archive photographs. Soon after his return to New Zealand in 1917, Bill Leadley became involved in the Canterbury Returned Soldiers’ Association and went on to invest an enormous amount of time and effort over the next 25 years – on both a professional and personal basis – helping to rehabilitate injured fellow servicemen.