Part of the award-winning series, The Drum, and by the multi-award-winning author Carole Wilkinson.

The first shots were fired at 11am, 19 July 1916. The Battle of Fromelles lasted less than 24 hours. When it was over, more than 5000 Australian soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. More soldiers died at Fromelles than in the Boer, Korean and Vietnam war combined. What was the point of this bloody loss of life? And why, almost a century later, did the attention of the world once again turn to Fromelles?