Throughout the semester I have been re-introduced to some intriguing topics in First World War history. While already familiar with the fundamentals of the war, including the histories of most of the participants, I have been drawn towards the experiences of the Dominion forces from Australia and Canada. Having lived in both Australia and Canada, I wrongly assumed that I had been exposed to all aspects of their Great War history. After attending lectures and reading various tomes, the realization that much remained to be learned has compelled me to take a closer look at those aforementioned participants. Because of Masters experience in Ontario a collection of Canadian works proved rather easy to gather. Australian literature, however, is proving to be illusive. Apparently living in Australia in the 1990′s, and being in middle school at the time, does not help me locate good synthetic works to being my studies on the Australia experience. Thus, if anyone is aware of any important books please leave me a message.
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The purpose of Thompson-Werk is to present the musings of a US War and Society doctoral student. Discussion topics principally center around the World Wars and Vietnam.
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I’m Australian, but unfortunately not really au fait with Australian military historiography. But Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 1999) is a good place to start for the very big picture (I think a new edition of this came out a couple of years ago), and it has a useful annotated bibliography for his WWI chapter. He recommends Joan Beaumont, ed., Australia’s War 1914-18 (Allen & Unwin, 1995) as the best available overview for WWI.
Thanks Brett! I’ll add those two books to my reading list.
Robert have you looked at the Australian War Memorial website? They have the Official Histories online amongst other things.
Ross, good idea! I love the Australian War Memorial and website, but I never thought of looking to see what documents they had online.
Also have a look at the Bibliography of the First World War at Birmingham’s Centre for First World War Studies. Here is the link to the Australia section:
http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/bibliography/Australia/index.htm
Thanks Ross! The Australia is bigger than I had anticipated.
G’day Robert,
As an Australian married to a Canadian, with time in both countries, sounds like our experiences may have some overlap! I’m no expert on W.W.I, but although I’ve not read it, ‘Somme Mud’ has been highly recommended:
http://forum.planetalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=3215
My good friend Andy Jones is a Great War aficiando, and he had this to say about it:
“‘Somme Mud’ was sent to me from Australia by James (many thanks) and is more focussed on the war itself.
Eddy Lynch served in the later stages of The Somme battle in 1916, at Ypres and later in the final great battles of 1918. When he returned to Australia, he wrote up his war experiences in several notebooks and apart from some excerpts which were published in a magazine, these remained stored until 2002 when the author’s grandson made them public and the writings were published.
This is a gritty book and I don’t exaggerate when I tell you that at certain points in the reading of it, I almost expected to find that rather grey sticky mud of The Somme in the creases of the pages.
Lynch spares us very little (quite rightly in my ‘onest) and describes much of what he saw in detail. Also to the eternal credit of the modern editor, Lynch is allowed to retain many of his opinions which by today’s politically correct standards would be unacceptable.
James brought the book to my attention on this very forum.”
Not sure if it would be academic enough, but it’s probably the biggest non-Gallipoli book on Australian W.W.I experience published recently.
Hope that helps.
Hey JDK, it does seem as though we may have similar overseas experiences. Based upon what you say, it Somme Mud sounds like a book that offers a good bottom-up account of the Somme. It seems to remind me of Martin Middlebrook’s work on the same battle. I will be sure to add Somme Mud to my reading list. Thanks for the suggestion.