Author(s): Jonathan King (Curator, British Museum)

Military History

A special 100th-anniversary edition. Long overshadowed by the national obsession with the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, the breathtaking story of what really happened on the Western Front has finally been brought into the bright light of day. The ANZACs' Western Front campaign had a greater impact than Gallipoli in almost every respect: five times more soldiers served and were killed there, more than five times as many battles took place - and it was there that an astounding 53 Victoria crosses were awarded to Australians. The diggers serving on the Western Front also helped win the war, but it was at an almost unfathomable cost. Using hundreds of brutally honest and extraordinary eyewitness accounts, The Western Front Diaries reproduces private diaries, letters, postcards, and photographs to reveal what it was really like at the Front, battle by bloody battle. Straight from the mouths of the men who fought there, it doesn't get more honest, raw, or heartbreaking than this.