Six Diggers a picture of bravery and loss
As they sat on steps outside a building in Egypt, they provided a telling illustration of the heroics and also the terrible toll of World War I.
The six men were all that was left by December 1917 of the 53-strong 2nd reinforcements of the WA-raised 10th Light Horse Regiment.
Among them, sitting in the middle of the front row, was Hugo Throssell, whose bravery at Gallipoli had earned him the Victoria Cross.
Another of the survivors of the original group, Thomas Charles Pickering, had sent a copy of the photo to his mother.
He told his mother that the group was "what remain in the regiment of our old lot of boys".
"The one without a tunic is Capt Throssell VC and your humble on his right as you look at the card," Pickering wrote.
Pickering had migrated to WA from Britain in 1910 in search of a drier and warmer climate.
He settled in the Northampton area and enlisted in December 1914, stating on his enlistment form that he was a farmhand.
After their training, Throssell and Pickering sailed with the regiment out of Fremantle on February 19, 1915, on the Itonus.
The regiment joined the 3rd Light Horse Brigade in Egypt and went on to serve dismounted at Gallipoli.
On August 7, 1915, the regiment took part in the tragically doomed dismounted charge into Turkish guns on a strip of land at Gallipoli known as the Nek.
At the time, Pickering was in hospital after falling sick.
It was an illness that may have saved his life.
The men of the 10th were cut to pieces at the Nek. The regiment had massive casualties.
The 10th also took part in the battle for Hill 60 at Gallipoli later in August, and it was during this action that Throssell's courage earned him the Victoria Cross.
After the withdrawal from Gallipoli in December 1915, the regiment was brought up to strength and reorganised.
It saw action across the deserts of Sinai, in Palestine and at the bloody battles to break the Gaza-Beersheba line.
It helped capture Jerusalem and fought on to Damascus, with Pickering among its ranks.
He suffered further bouts of illness, including malaria. After the war finished, Pickering finally sailed for home in June 1919 aboard the Ormonde.
On his return to WA he went back to the Northampton area and took on a property.
But the land proved difficult to crop and he moved to Mullewa, having married Phyllis Mitchell.
They stayed on the land until the Great Depression in the 1930s, when Pickering left the land and went to work for WA Government Railways, and they moved to Geraldton.
He had two daughters and two sons, including Jack, who was named in honour of a mate in the 10th Light Horse who was lost in the war.
Tom Pickering died in 1968, aged 75, leaving his wife, children and 11 grandchildren.
