Journal of the Australian War Memorial articles

Recent articles from Journal of the Australian War Memorial

ANZAC day to VP day: arguments and interpretations.
February 1, 2007... What is the current state of Australian historiography of the two world wars? As editor of the reference volume in the seven-volume series that marked the centenary of the Australian defence, Australian defence: sources and statistics, [1] I had a unique opportunity some five years ago to...

Memory, methodology, and myth: some of the challenges of writing Australian prisoner of war history.
February 1, 2007... One day in 1999, I found myself in northern New South Wales, interviewing a former Australian Second World War prisoner of the Japanese--a lovely man who was anxious to help and who congratulated me for wanting to write about the experience of Australian prisoners of war. After a three-hour...

Soldiers' journeys: returning to the battlefields of the Great War.
February 1, 2007... The Great War claimed the lives of over 60,000 Australians. They were buried, if at all, not far from where they fell, in cemeteries scarring the landscapes of Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine, Belgium, and France. Pilgrimages to these sites began in the 1920s when mothers, fathers, wives, and...

The Palestine Campaign 1916-18: causes and consequences of a continuing historical neglect.
February 1, 2007... The Palestine Campaign occupies a curious place in the historiography of the First World War. Some of its events, most notably the charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba, have captured the popular Australian imagination and popular history in a way that few other episodes of the...

"Unconscious of any distinction"? Social and vocational quality in the Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1918 [1].
February 1, 2007... In the first volume of The story of ANZAC, official war historian Charles Bean claimed: [T]here were in the Australian force no special corps in which University or "public school" men enlisted apart from others.... for the most part the wealthy, the educated, the rough and...