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'The public discussion about Australia’s military past seems to be getting increasingly histrionic every year. In the hands of our politicians, who apparently have an innate understanding of the power of the military story to promote self-serving nationalism, our dominant war narrative is about a little country’s unbounded male courage and sacrifice. Indeed, we are almost always told about the men, the ‘Diggers’, who are held aloft as the archetype of the faultless Antipodean hero. Coerced to the surface are tales about young, white men from idyllic country towns who, when the whistle blows, blindly throw themselves over the top. Thankfully, a handful of historians and fiction writers are starting to explore different war narratives.' (Introduction)
