This is a biography of Vera Deakin, daughter of the Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, focussing on her work with the Australian Red Cross. At the outbreak of war she gave up her musical studies to initiate the Wounded and Missing Inquiry Bureau of the Red Cross in Cairo and later in London. After the War she championed the needs of limbless veterans. During the Second World War Vera undertook similar work in Melbourne for the Red Cross. She was also involved in other Melbourne charities and welfare bodies, including the Children's hospital and Yooralla.

Over the twentieth century 35,000 Australians suffered as prisoners of war in conflicts ranging from World War I to Korea. What was the reality of their captivity? Beyond Surrender presents for the first time the diversity of the Australian 'behind-the-wire' experience, dissecting fact from fiction and myth from reality. Beyond Surrender examines the impact that different types of camps, commandants and locations had on surrender, survival, prison life and the prospects of escape. It considers the attitudes of Australian governments to those who had surrendered, the work of relief agencies and the agony of families waiting at home for their husbands, brothers and fathers to be freed. Covering several conflicts and diverse sites of captivity, Beyond Surrender showcases new research from Kate Ariotti, Joan Beaumont, Lachlan Grant, Jeffrey Grey, Karl James, Jennifer Lawless, Peter Monteath, Melanie Oppenheimer, Aaron Pegram, Lucy Robertson, Seumas Spark and Christina Twomey.

The unprecedented scope and intensity of the First World War has prompted an enormous body of retrospective scholarship. However, efforts to provide a coherent synthesis about the war's impact and significance have remained circumscribed, tending to focus either on the operational outlines of military strategy and tactics or on the cultural legacy of the conflict as transmitted bythe war's most articulate observers. This volume departs from traditional accounts on several scores: by exploring issues barely touched upon in previous works, by deviating from the widespread tendency to treat the experiences of front and homefront isolation, and by employing a thematic treatment that, by considering the construction of authority and identity between 1914 and 1918, illuminates the fundamental question of how individuals, whether in uniform or not, endured the war's intrusion into so many aspects of their public and private lives.

Although Australia is only a young country in comparison to other nations, it can hold its head up high and proudly proclaim that it is one of the giants in this world of toil and trouble in which we live. When the odds are stacked against Australians, they dont turn and run; instead, they stand and fight and overcome the obstacles that face them. The contents of this volume are a tribute to all the men and women of this proud and great country, who have come from all walks of life to give of their time, and unfortunately, some have even given their lives, to defend this great land and keep it free. There have been politicians, doctors, nurses, police officers, average everyday citizens, musicians, actors, artists, farmers, graziers, authors, sportsmen and women, journalists, and a host of others who have taken up the cause for their country and the monarchy, serving from the Crimean to the war in Vietnam and beyond. Their heroic deeds and their many sacrifices have ensured that todays generation can rest easier, proud in the knowledge that these servicemen and women have paved the way for our freedom. Now they come together once again as one big family to shed an insight on their achievements so that you can fully understand and appreciate what they have and had experienced. I dedicate this work to the memory of all those who have made the supreme sacrifice in order that we may live in peace and prosperity and also to the families of those who did not return. The book is not a glorification of war but a glorification of the individual and his or her actions and deeds.

Surviving the Great War is the first detailed analysis of Australians in German captivity in WW1. By placing the hardships of prisoners of war in a broader social and military content, this book adds a new dimension to the national wartime experience and challenges popular representations of Australia's involvement in the First World War.

This book contributes to the global turn in First World War studies by exploring Australians’ engagements with the conflict across varied boundaries and by situating Australian voices and perspectives within broader, more complex contexts. This diverse and multifaceted collection includes chapters on the composition and contribution of the Australian Imperial Force, the experiences of prisoners of war, nurses and Red Cross workers, the resonances of overseas events for Australians at home, and the cultural legacies of the war through remembrance and representation. The local-global framework provides a fresh lens through which to view Australian connections with the Great War, demonstrating that there is still much to be said about this cataclysmic event in modern history.

Brothers in War is the immensely powerful and deeply tragic story of the Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country. All eight went to fight in the Great War on such far-flung battlefields as France, Flanders, East Africa and Gallipoli. Only three would return alive. Even amid the carnage of the trenches, it was a family trauma almost without parallel. Their wives and sweethearts were left bereft, their widowed mother Amy devastated. It is a tragedy that has remained forgotten and unmarked for nearly 90 years. Until now. Kept in a small brown case handed down by the brothers' youngest sister, Edie, were hundreds of letters sent home from the front by the Beechey boys: scraps of paper scribbled on in the firing line, heartfelt messages written from a deathbed, exasperated correspondences detailing the absurdities of life in the trenches. From it all emerges the remarkable tale of the lost brothers. Tragic and moving, poetic in its intensity, Brothers in War reveals first-hand the catastrophe that was the Great War; all told through one family forced to sacrifice everything.