But this week, the journey ends. The Newcastle-based military historian has hit the "send" button on his final column for "The Hunter Remembers" series.

David Dial can only hazard a guess at how many words he has written in those five years.

"Well, up to 2000 words a week, so 104,000 words a year," Mr Dial muses. "Probably half a million words."

What is immeasurable is the impact of Mr Dial's columns in bringing the past to life for readers by reproducing the news, the enlistments, the names of those who had come home, and those who would never return, as reported in the Newcastle Morning Herald between 1914 and 1919.

"It's part of our region's history, and their stories have been told," the 64-year-old says.

A passion for local military history is in David Dial's blood. The son and grandson of Second World War veterans, Mr Dial graduated from watching Anzac Day marches as a kid to participating in commemorative services, dressed in an Australian Light Horse uniform - and with his own steed.

In 1980, he had bought an Australian stock horse, called Mirth, and together they were part of Newcastle's Anzac Day services for more than a decade.

At those services, Mr Dial would think about all those from the Hunter who had signed up for the First World War. Those thoughts prompted David Dial to wonder just how many had enlisted from this region. He was determined to find out.

And so began an odyssey through time, and through many thousands of archived newspaper pages, documents, websites, and microfiche films.

From the late 1980s, the engineering draughtsman spent his spare moments in the local history section of Newcastle Region Library: "I haunted the place".

Early on, he was researching the 1915 journey of the "Wallabies", an ever-growing group of recruits who marched from the state's north-west to Newcastle.

But Mr Dial had trouble unearthing information about the march until he realised it had been filed in the sports section. The Wallabies had been mistaken for the rugby team. It was also an indication of how people knew so little about their own history.

David Dial ventured beyond the library for his research into the Wallabies' march. He commemorated its 75^th anniversary by spending more than a month retracing the recruits' journey, and he wrote a book, The March of the Wallabies, in 1990.

The march through history continued for David Dial. By delving into rolls and newspaper reports, he gradually compiled his list of Hunter men and women who had served in the First World War.

"I did the hard yards, not like today, where it's online," he says. "Those mouse pad historians have got it easy today!"

His data base grew to 11,500 names. Men, boys, and women from the Hunter who had signed up to do their bit in The Great War.

More than two thousand of those locals would die during the war.

"I was immersed in accounts of battles, casualties, letters home, and deaths," Mr Dial says.

"So for me Remembrance Day is not just November 11th, it's every day of the year, mate."

The research became a full-time undertaking for Mr Dial, as he spent hours each day in the library and at his desk, transcribing and compiling what he had found.

But creating the long list of names was never enough for the historian. David Dial wanted to share the stories he was reading, to flesh out the lives he was learning about, as he did his research.

In early 2014, with the centenary of the beginning of the First World War looming, David Dial approached the Newcastle Herald. He proposed a daily strip, listing the names of the Hunter residents who had enlisted, and those who had died, on that day exactly 100 years earlier, as well as publishing transcripts of Herald articles from the time.

That idea grew into the column, "The Hunter Remembers".

Each week, Herald readers could learn about what their forebears experienced a century earlier; the victories and defeats, the gains and the awful losses.

Through David Dial's research, the toll of war has reached through the years and hit home.

"We all have a purpose in life, and this may be one of mine, to commemorate those who have gone before us," he says

David Dial decided history had provided the logical full stop for the column.

One hundred years ago, on June 28,1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, formalising peace.

So this week, for his final column, David Dial recalls the reaction to the signing of the peace treaty.

He recounts the words of the leaders of countries and empires, victorious and vanquished.

And he brings to light those who would otherwise slip through the cracks of time. Mr Dial introduces the reader to Private Jock "Wacker" Buman, a West Maitland bloke who survived the war and was finally home.

While the column series ends, David Dial's passion for local military history and research doesn't.

He has his Hunter Valley Military History page on Facebook, and there are more books in the works, including a biography about one name among the thousands that has etched itself into Mr Dial's memory: Lieutenant Colonel Robert Scobie.

Lieutenant Colonel Scobie was an officer from Oakhampton who had cheated death on the Gallipoli peninsula, before he was killed in August 1915 during the Battle of Lone Pine.

"He was the highest ranking officer from the Hunter Valley to be killed in the First World War, Mr Dial says.

David Dial has been recognised for his research. He has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia and a Centenary Medal. But it is recognition for all those Hunter people who served a century ago that David Dial considers the greatest reward to have come from his work.

"It's the least I could do for those names," David Dial says. "It's raising awareness of them, and I believe that many of them would not have been known otherwise today.

"I didn't know those names in life, but I've known them in death."

Read more: David Dial's final "The Hunter Remembers" column

While you're with us, did you know The Herald is now offering breaking news alerts, daily email newsletters and more? Keep up-to-date with all the local news - sign up here.