AustLit

'The Forgotten explores an often-overlooked part of Australia’s rich and diverse history – the service and sacrifice of the Chinese Labour Corps who worked under the British and French on the Western Front during the First World War. It puts the story of the Chinese Labour Corps into the broader history of China’s encounters with western European nations since the 1700s.
'A part of that story includes the large numbers of Chinese people who immigrated to Australia during this period. It was the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of these Chinese settlers who volunteered to fight for Australia during the First World War. Those men are the Chinese Anzacs. The Forgotten celebrates the shared history between China and Australia and the combined efforts to promote peace.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Known as The Boy Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Marks, was the youngest battalion commander in the AIF and highly regarded not only as a future military commander, but as a business and community leader.

It was a blustery day on the 25th January 1920 at Palm Beach to the north of Sydney and the surf was wild. Two attempts had already been made to save a young woman caught in an undertow and dragged out when a young man; skinny, gangly and frail and known to be a poor swimmer, threw off his coat and shoes and raced into the surf. As his fiancée and young nephew watched, the sea closed over him and he disappeared. His body was never recovered.

This was the sad and tragic fate of a gallant, highly decorated and promising young man named Douglas Gray Marks. And it was a great loss to a nation whose manhood had been decimated and where the pain of the war remained evident and raw.

Douglas Marks was born in 1895 and educated at Fort Street High School. He had, like so many enthusiastic and patriotic young men, basic military training when he turned up at the drill hall in Rozelle two days after the declaration of war. Before embarking in November 1914, he had received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the AIF.

After a period of training in Egypt, he embarked for the Gallipoli peninsula and landed on the second day. Spending a great deal of time in the dangerous frontline trenches at Quinn's Post where he was wounded, he remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December of that year. Just twenty years old, he was seen as an inspirational young officer, promoted to captain and given acting command of his battalion.

Marks then travelled back to Egypt, saw the re-organisation of his beloved 13th battalion and the raising of its sister battalion, the 45th. Sailing from Alexandria, he crossed the Mediterranean to Marseilles and took the train to the north of France and the nursery areas around Armentieres and Bois Grenier.

From here, Douglas Marks found himself in the worst battles that the AIF were to fight in: Pozieres and Moquet Farm, Flers, Gueudecourt, Stormy Trench and Bullecourt on the Somme. He then travelled north and was part of the horrendous battles around Ypres in Flanders in 1917: Messines, Polygon Wood, Hollebeke and Passchendaele. Back on the Somme in early 1918, he fought at Villers Bretonneux, Le Hamel, the Battle of Amiens from the 8th August and in the fighting through to the withdrawal of his battalion in September 1918.

By this time he had been wounded a number of times, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, was the commander of his battalion and had been decorated with a Military Cross, a Distinguished Service Order, the Serbian Order of the White Eagle and had been mentioned in despatches.

He returned to Australia and to civilian life in late 1918. In 1919 he became engaged to 'Queenie' and in January 1920, took that fateful journey to Palm Beach. Though we do not know what happened to 'Queenie', his distraught mother never came out of her house again.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Imagine this.

'You are a country boy and just eighteen. The war has been raging for two years and because of your age, you have not been eligible for enlistment. Your mates, older by a few months are joining up and disappearing to the great adventure across the world in Europe. And there is forever talk of the need for reinforcements, for men like you to join up and support the Empire, Australia and your mates in the line.

'Such was the case for Edward Francis Lynch, a typical country boy from Perthville, near Bathurst. When war was declared in early August 1914, he was just sixteen and still at school, but like a generation of young males in Australia, there was something to prove and a need to be there.

'Will Davies, editor of the bestselling Somme Mud, meticulously tracked Lynch and his battalion's travels; their long route marches to flea ridden billets, into the frontline at such places as Messines, Dernancourt, Stormy Trench and Villers Bretonneux, to rest areas behind the lines and finally, on the great push to the final victory after August 1918. In words and pictures Davies fills in the gaps in Private Lynch's story and through the movements of the other battalions of the AIF provides impact and context to their plight and achievements. Looking at these battlefields today, the pilgrims who visit and those who attend to the land we come to understand how the spirit of Australia developed and of our enduring role in world politics.' (Publisher's blurb)

'"It's the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying."

'Private Edward Lynch was just 18 when he enlisted in the army. When he returned to Australia almost three years later, he wrote Somme Mud, a vivid account of the horrific realities of trench warfare from an ordinary infantryman's point of view: the traumatised soldiers and ravaged landscapes, the curious mixture of hatred, empathy and admiration for the equally naive enemy soldiers, the disillusionment and the camaraderie.

'Lynch's candour and down-to-earth wit make Somme Mud engaging for any reader, while archival photographs, a full glossary and editor Will Davies' explanatory chapter introductions make this edition an illuminating text for students. As well as a memoir of one man's experience of war, Somme Mud is an evocative record of the language and attitudes of early twentieth century Australia.' (From the publisher's website, 2010 ed.)