This exhibition focuses on the role of local servicemen and women in Belgium and France and the 33rd Battalion AIF which was formed in January 1916 at a camp established at the Armidale showground.

The bulk of the battalion's recruits were drawn from the New England region and thus it was dubbed "New England's Own". The battalion's first and only commanding officer was Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Morshead, who would become famous as the commander of the 9th Australian Division during the Second World War.

The 33rd Battalion consisted of about 1000 men; maintained at that level by continual reinforcements. It became part of the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Australian Division.

It left Sydney, bound for the United Kingdom in May 1916. Arriving there in early July 1916, the battalion spent the next four months training.

It crossed to France in late November 1916 and moved into the trenches of the Western Front for the first time on November 27, just in time for the onset of the terrible winter of 1916-17.

The battalion had to wait until the emphasis of British and Dominion operations switched to the Ypres sector of Belgium in mid-1917 to take part in its first major battle at Messines, launched on June 7. The battalion held the ground captured during the battle for several days afterwards and was subjected to intense artillery bombardment.

The battalion's next major battle was around Passchendaele on October 12, 1917. The battlefield, though, had been deluged with rain, and thick mud tugged at the advancing troops and fouled their weapons. The battle ended in a disastrous defeat.

For the next five months, the 33rd alternated between periods of rest, training, labouring, and service in the line.

When the German Army launched its last great offensive in the spring of 1918, the battalion was part of the force deployed to defend the approaches to Amiens around Villers-Bretonneau. It took part in a counter-attack at Hangard Wood on March 30, 1918, and helped to defeat a major drive on Villers-Bretonneau on April 4 that year.

Later in 1918, the 33rd also played a role in the Allied offensive. It fought at the battle of Amiens on August 8, during the rapid advance that followed, and in the operation that breached the Hindenburg Line at the end of September 1918, thus sealing Germany's defeat.

The 33rd Battalion disbanded in May 1919. Its war was constant barbed wire, gas, trenches, bombardments and gunfire. The soldiers acquitted themselves well in battle but it came at a terrible price – 413 were killed in action or died of wounds, while 4300 suffered casualties.

In 2014, I visited most of these historic places. It was a compelling, sombre but must-do pilgrimage. The imitation kangaroos in shop windows at Villers-Bretonneau, the Australian-sponsored school with its memorabilia and the signs “N’oublie pas les Australiennes”, (never forget the Australians) were intensely evocative.

The fact that 100 years on the French still fondly remember these gallant soldiers is very special indeed.

To stand on the battlefield at Passchendaele where in one day, Australia lost almost 5000 of its very best and finest was something I will never forget. Such a tragic waste of precious Australian lives.

To walk among the memorials, cemeteries and thousands of graves makes one abhorred by the absolute futility of war and killing.

At war’s end, these veterans returned home. Many wore the physical and mental scars of their ordeal. A grateful New England erected memorials in every town and today, still “we will remember them”.

It was an honour to officially launch The Great War in Broad Outlines exhibition at the Armidale Folk Museum.