Men of Mont St Quentin: between victory and death

by Peter Stanley

Overview

At exactly 1.30 p.m. on 1 September 1918, the dozen men of Nine Platoon, 21st Australian Infantry Battalion, rose from Elsa Trench and walked across a weedy beet-field toward the German defenders of Mont St Quentin. Within hours, three were dead and five more were wounded, one of whom died six weeks later. The survivors returned from war, more-or-less intact, to live through the next sixty-odd years in the shadow of that traumatic event.

Men of Mont St Quentin tells the story of the men of Nine Platoon and their families. This is the first time that the story of such a group of Australians has been told — only made possible because Garry Roberts, the father of one of the dead, was so grieved by his son Frank’s death that he obsessively collected accounts of what happened that afternoon. The Roberts’ family papers, used here in this way for the first time, reveal the lives of Frank’s comrades and their families as they came to terms with loss and life after war.

In the hands of Peter Stanley, one of Australia’s leading military historians, a famous battlefield in France becomes unforgettably connected with Australian men and their families in the long aftermath of the Great War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781921215339
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	08/31/2009
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Dr Peter Stanley is a professor of history at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He has published twenty-five books, mainly on Australian military social history, such as Tarakan, Quinn’s Post, and Men of Mont St Quentin (also published by Scribe). In 2011, he jointly won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History for his 2010 book Bad Characters: sex, crime, mutiny, murder, and the Australian Imperial Force. He wrote Black Saturday at Steels Creek as head of the Research Centre at the National Museum of Australia, in partnership with the Australian National University’s Centre for Environmental History, and with the people of Steels Creek.

Table of Contents

Note on source vi

Prologue: 'The Most Awful Day in Our Lives' 1

Introduction: Remembering the Great War 7

Part I Belonging: The Road to Querrieu 19

Part II Fighting: Mont St Quentin, 1 September 1918 73

Part III Grieving: 'The War Took Him' 149

Part IV Remembering: Shadows of a Battle 191

Epilogue: The Sound of a Voice So Still 255

Acknowledgements 263

Notes 267

Bibliography 282

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

What makes this book different from others about the war is that it also describes the aftermath; how the action affected the survivors—and the families of those who did not come home…Peter Stanley has done his work well.”
—Courier Mail

“Stanley is an excellent writer whose imaginative approach and resonant prose lift this study above much other war writing.”
—The Age

From the Publisher

‘Stanley is an excellent writer whose imaginative approach and resonant prose lift this study above much other war writing.’

The Age

‘What makes this book different from others about the war is that it also describes the aftermath; how the action affected the survivors - and the families of those who did not come home ... Peter Stanley has done his work well.’

Courier Mail