AustLit

'The first to read this series was General Ian Hamilton, who commanded the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces during the Gallipoli Campaign, in which Major MacDonald served. General Hamilton says: 'Major MacDonald ransacks his brain and spots some big nuggets which have lain embedded there ever since the cliffs of Sari Bair were stormed in 1915, and picks them out carefully with his pen. This work has been a work of love, showing as it does the real Digger as he became known to the British Officers at the Dardanelles...an adventurer right enough, but an adventurer with a heart of gold - the softest, kindest heart any girl would like to have, to keep and hold...the sort of heat that responds with instant kindliness and affection to any weak, immature or suffering thing, whether in the shape of bird, beast or child. All this side of the old A.I.F. is brought out very charmingly in the following chapters, which will portray a side of the Digger faithfully to posterity; a side left untouched until now by all the lurid descriptions of his conduct amidst the bayonets and shells of the battlefield...' (Source: The Australian Journal, November 1931, p1299)