Anzac Labour explores the horror, frustration and exhaustion surrounding working life in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. Based on letters and diaries of Australian soldiers, it traces the history of work and workplace cultures through Australia, the shores of Gallipoli, the fields of France and Belgium, and the Near East.

Raise a glass for an Anzac. Run for an Anzac. Camp under the stars for an Anzac. Is there anything Australians won’t do to keep the Anzac legend at the centre of our national story? But standing firm on the other side of the Anzac enthusiasts is a chorus of critics claiming that the appetite for Anzac is militarising our history and indoctrinating our children. So how are we to make sense of this struggle over how we remember the Great War? Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography cuts through the clamour to provide a much-needed historical perspective on the battle over Anzac. It traces how, since 1915, Australia’s memory of the Great War has declined and surged, reflecting the varied and complex history of the Australian nation itself. Most importantly, it asks why so many Australians persist with the fiction that the nation was born on 25 April 1915.

This provocative book is reassessment of Australia's role in World War I and its relations with Britain.

The story behind the man central to how Australia planned for, and fought in, WWI.

This book contributes to the global turn in First World War studies by exploring Australians’ engagements with the conflict across varied boundaries and by situating Australian voices and perspectives within broader, more complex contexts. This diverse and multifaceted collection includes chapters on the composition and contribution of the Australian Imperial Force, the experiences of prisoners of war, nurses and Red Cross workers, the resonances of overseas events for Australians at home, and the cultural legacies of the war through remembrance and representation. The local-global framework provides a fresh lens through which to view Australian connections with the Great War, demonstrating that there is still much to be said about this cataclysmic event in modern history.

Anzac Memories was first published to acclaim in 1994, and has achieved international renown for its pioneering contribution to the study of war memory and mythology. Michael McKernan wrote that the book gave ‘as good a picture of the impact of the Great War on individuals and Australia as we are likely to get in this generation’, and Michael Roper concluded that ‘an immense achievement of this book is that it so clearly illuminates the historical processes that left men like my grandfather forever struggling to fashion myths which they could live by’. In this new edition Alistair Thomson explores how the Anzac legend has transformed over the past quarter century, how a ‘post-memory’ of the Great War creates new challenges and opportunities for making sense of the national past, and how veterans’ war memories can still challenge and complicate national mythologies. He returns to a family war history that he could not write about twenty years ago because of the stigma of war and mental illness, and he uses newly released Repatriation files to question his own earlier account of veterans’ post-war lives and memories and to think afresh about war and memory.

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Charts the history of pilgrimages to the battlefields and cemeteries of World War Two through surveys, interviews and fieldwork.

On 9 August 1918, at Chipilly Spur overlooking the Somme River, an entire British Army Corps is held up by German machine gunners. The battle has raged for 30 hours and more than 2000 men have fallen. Then, two Australian sergeants, Jack Hayes and Harold Andrews, go absent without leave and cross the Somme ahead of British lines. Seeing that the British advance is stopped, they re-cross the river, gather four mates and return to drive the Germans off the spur. The extraordinary feats of the Chipilly Six and the personal stories of these diggers have been overlooked. Historian Lucas Jordan weaves a compelling tale of the lives of the soldiers, chronicling their return home and years after service, through a pandemic, the Great Depression, another world war and the very first Anzac Day dawn service. ‘The Chipilly Six were extraordinary men in extraordinary times. Lucas Jordan reveals a wider story of Australia’s Great War veterans as they battled a nation forgetting, a bitter Depression, another World War and beyond. This is a remarkable insight into a vanishing world’ — Bill Gammage, Emeritus Professor, Humanities Research Centre, ANU ‘An absolute cracker of a story. No one — and I literally mean no one! — is more equipped to write a compelling book about the remarkable story of the Chipilly Six.’ — Ross McMullin, author of Life So Full of Promise ‘A superb piece of investigative historical storytelling. Lucas Jordan is part of a new generation of military historians. He is a bright star.’ — Peter Stanley, author of Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force ‘Throws new light on the impact of war on families and communities, wives and brothers-in-arms.’ — Marilyn Lake, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne

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