Hot off the Press

The long-awaited package containing copies of my new novel arrived today, its arrival, fittingly perhaps, held up by war. Here is the novel's prologue. Readers of my blog might recognise some of the text from a post I wrote back in August 2018. That post was the seed that generated this story.

I have in my possession a photograph of two great uncles, two of three half-brothers who enlisted as soldiers in the Great War, served in Gallipoli and on the Western Front, experienced, like so many others, psychological and physical injury, and returned to carry the scars for the remainder of their lives. What follows is not their story, though it was inspired by that photograph taken in a studio in London in October 1915. They were in London to recuperate from injuries, illness, and, for one of them, shell shock suffered in the fighting at Gallipoli. The photograph shows them pensive, unsmiling: two young men who have already experienced the reality of war. It is very different from another photograph that I possess, this one showing my father, freshly donned in his Australian Imperial Force uniform, including the slouch hat, grinning broadly as he walks from the enlisting station in April 1940. It is a picture full of patriotism, pride, and innocence. That is how men often go to war. The other is how they return.

In this novel, I have tried to imagine what might have been the experiences of a young man caught up in the patriotic maelstrom that swept through many lands in 1914, the pride he initially felt, a pride that was particularly strong for young men in a newly established nation wishing to prove their individuality, loyalty and worth. In this regard, the Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) were indeed successful. Even in this present age of myth-debunking, when there are those who challenge the role of Gallipoli in forging Australia as an independent nation, it cannot be denied that the First World War gave these new nations a history and a mythology. But war invariably opens with illusions and concludes with disillusionment. The First World War left a scar on every participating nation, on every soldier who returned, and on every loved one of those who did not return, a scar that could be observed in the houses and hospitals, on the streets of the cities, towns, and villages across every involved country for decades after the war. This story is not a manifest against war, for war is not always avoidable. One can condemn an aggressor, but not the defender against aggression. If there is a theme, it is brotherhood—the bond that binds fellow soldiers; if there is a sentiment, it is compassion—compassion for wasted youth; and if there is a moral, it is condemnation—condemnation of those who incite war, who profit from it, and who are insensitive to the suffering it causes.