Comments on: Good Australian Great War Literature?

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:53:31 +0000

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.

By: JDK

JDK — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:52:02 +0000

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.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:18:49 +0000

Thanks Ross! The Australia is bigger than I had anticipated.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:58:56 +0000

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

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:37:18 +0000

Ross, good idea! I love the Australian War Memorial and website, but I never thought of looking to see what documents they had online.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:06:13 +0000

Robert have you looked at the Australian War Memorial website? They have the Official Histories online amongst other things.

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:56:26 +0000

Thanks Brett! I’ll add those two books to my reading list.

By: Brett

Brett — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:32:45 +0000

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.