On Remembrance Day: new ways to understand an old war

Remembrance Day prompts us to reflect on the war whose end it marked, the Great War of 1914-18. It remains the focus of much Australian commemoration. Other wars – from Sydney Cove in 1788 to Uruzgun in 2014 – deserve to be remembered too, but for now, it’s fitting to think about what’s been written about the First World War.

That question’s been on my mind over the past year as I wrote Beyond The Broken Years, stimulated by this year being the 50th anniversary of the publication of Bill Gammage’s The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, one of the most influential books in the field. After The Broken Years, Australian military history was done in a new way and we are still reaping the benefits.