The Little Book of ANZACS

Young nations do the bidding of empire and send their youth to a faraway war.

Their soldiers arrive with a reputation for rebelling against authority and ill-discipline. They fight in an ill-fated campaign, under foreign command, against a well dug in enemy.

Month after month they shoot and die in a whirling furnace of shrapnel and cordite. The men and their enemy, the air and the trenches: filled with blood, dust, ice, and fire.

The disrespect for authority remains. But in the heat of battle – the infantrymen youth of Australia and New Zealand carve a reputation for bravery and recklessness, for discipline under fire, for cheerfulness, ingenuity and mateship. The sacrifice of the ordinary men and women of the ANZACS birth a legend that inspires today.

ANZAC came to mean more than a Corp of men or a site of landing. The ANZAC story is the tale of new world nations, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the old, and being up to the test.