So reads the last diary entry of Wagga man John Joseph Condell, written the night before he was killed in action at Gallipoli on August 7, 1915.

Mr Condell’s diary details his experiences of being part of the 1st Australian Light Horse Regiment, from when he sailed out of Sydney for Cairo to the night before he was killed.

The diary passed to Mr Condell’s nephew of the same name, though he prefers to be known as Jack, who began taking an increased interest in his family’s experiences with World War I when his son, Steve, began studying it at school.

“Because he had that connection, we started to ask questions,” Steve said.

And Jack’s journey into his family’s history, particularly his uncle’s, raised questions of his own.

“You wonder the man he might have been, don’t you?” Jack said.

Jack’s father came back from the war, but never told him much about his experiences.

“Returned soldiers never talked about the war,” he said. “It was too terrible for them.”

Local historian and author Anne Flood, who has just written a book, In the Footsteps of the First, about the 1st Australian Light Horse Regiment, discovered Jack’s link to Gallipoli shortly after writing the book.

The fact that Jack’s full name was the same as one of the Diggers she had written about in her book piqued her interest and she contacted him to discover his link to the regiment.

“I discovered that Jack had a mind that was crystal clear and he had such an interest,” she said.