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Notes
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Editor's note: The son of a four-time Sydney lord mayor, Frederic Manning was residing in England when war broke out in 1914. He enlisted in the British Army and endured the vicious trench warfare on the Western Front. This experience provided the basis of his novel The Middle Parts of Fortune (sometimes known as Her Privates We, the title of its expurgated version). Though much admired internationally - Ernest Hemingway thought it 'the finest and noblest book of men in war' - the novel was until recently neglected in Australia. Bourne, its autobiographical protagonist, is regarded as an oddity by his largely proletarian English comrades. "Not of their country...not even of their country...and only partially of their race', he's an erudite Francophile who betrays a streak of colonial irreverence and independence.
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From Volume One, chapter five: pp 105-116
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Last amended 7 Jul 2014 12:45:02