Active Service: With Australia in the Middle East

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This is an illustrated notebook on the life of Australians in the Middle Eastern theatre of war. Almost all of the contents are the work of men on active service. Reports are included on most of the actions in which Australian forces have so far taken part. It has been possible to include in these reports much detail which has not hitherto been available to the public. Similarly among the photographs, there are some which have already been published and many which now emerge from military and other official sources for the first time. They have been selected primarily for their value as graphic records of fact. It is hoped that the result, in text and photography, may be a more intimate if still fragmentary understanding of the campaigns. The balance and perspective of true history cannot yet be brought to bear on events.

The contributions published are necessarily a very small proportion of those sent in by members of the A.I.F. who wished to help this book along. Authorship has been indicated only by the writer's army number or initials. If they are thereby made anonymous outside their own home circles, the men who wrote this book have at the same time become spokesmen for the wider personality of the A.I.F. as a whole. We believe that they have, between them, covered with representative spirit and sincerity the experiences and moods that are typical of active service.

Pictorial work naturally proclaims its creators more openly. In addition to the official war artists, some of whose works are reproduced here, several members of the A.I.F. have helpers, including those associated with the Australian War Memorial Board who supervised publication in Australia.

Detailed acknowledgements are almost as difficult to achieve as detailed references to all those arms, services and auxiliaries who comprise the Australian war effort in the Middle East. Such pages as these can be but fugitive notes. They aspire only to outline the human pattern of a great unfinished story.