G. H. Fearnside

Another little gem found hidden amongst the shelves of Grants Bookshop.

Published in 1975, this book is a memoir of the author's service in the Second World War. As a platoon sergeant he served with the 2/13 Battalion, 9 Division, Australian Imperial Force, at Tobruk and El Alamein in 1941-1942, and later as a commissioned officer with the 2/3 Battalion, 6 Division, AIF in the Aitape-Wewak Campaign in New Guinea, 1944-1945. In some ways the book is also a potted unit history of the battalions in which he served. But it is also something more. There is a subtle undercurrent of a man trying to explain and understand what happened to him and his comrades during those years, and how the consequences carried forward into the men they became. The author's older brother served in the same battalion as he, dying of wounds at Tobruk, and the book is full of brief cameos what became of his fellow soldiers, whether or not they survived the war.

After coming home in 1945, GH Fearnside went on to have a career as a journalist and author, dying in 1978, aged only 60 years, 3 years after this book was published.

Copy purchased secondhand by the Reviewer from Grants Bookshop Sandringham.… (plus d'informations)