Next on the list is a privately-produced book on the experiences of my Grandfather during WW1 and the period leading up to it.
He entered the RAA as a junior officer before the war started, and was stationed at Ft Queenscliff when the Port Phillip defences fired the first hostile shots by a British or Commonwealth nation, for that conflict.
He deployed with the Australian Siege Brigade, the first AIF combat unit to reach the Western Front, and finished the war as a Battery Commander with a DSO and three MID.
I’ve read some of his war diary.... often very dry. “Carried on the war as usual” . “A big shoot” can be correlated by date and position with some of the larger actions of the war, but he doesn’t make much of that. Arriving to find that “the enemy got our range, during the night” meant listing the day’s tasks. Dealing with casualties, locating spare parts, requesting reinforcements and getting guns back into action.
I knew him as an old man, who had been through both world wars. Very human, very sympathetic ... but knew when to pyt that aside to get the job done.