This is an anthology of the personal experience of war by 32 Australian writers since 1915. Most of these reports are informative and riveting reading. While some are letters or diary-entries written almost in the heat of battle, others are excerpts from books written post bellum from the calm deliberation of the study. Many of the former - read from the perspective of 2006 - are, understandably, partisan and jingoistic -treating the enemy as inhuman monsters; some of the latter have a touch of journalistic self-indulgence. Several of the names are well-known: Charles Bean, Chester Wilmot, Ion Idriess, Kenneth Slessor, Rohan Rivett. Wilfred Burchett, Paul McGeough. Many are Walkley Award winners.
Most readers will be able to place the locations in context from seeing direct television coverage - in the case of Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan - and from historical programmes on the others.
Not surprisingly, the majority of the writers are male journalists. The exceptions are Betty Jeffrey - an army nurse who was captured by the Japanese in Singapore, one of the few survivors of the sinking of the Vyner Brook and, with Vivienne Bullwinkel, of the massacre on Banka Island; Irris Mackler - the ABC's 'woman in Kabul'; and the versatile Monika Attard - who reported for the ABC from Moscow during the time of the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Why are some writers keen to risk life and limb by reporting from war? Individual motivations lie somewhere between the extremes articulated by Bean - who landed at Gallipoli with the ANZACS on 25th April, 1915, and who was dedicated to proving, rationally, that the heroism of the diggers was an ornament to the British Empire, and by Mackler: 'Danger is an aphrodisiac...When your colleagues are dying around you...it makes life - and love - more precious.' (Shades of Ernest Hemingway!) However, her writing is among the most cogent.
Significantly, the book is prefaced by the names of 24 journalists who have been killed on front-lines since 1939. That none died during the carnage of the First World War, and so many since, is a reflection on how the character of war - and journalists' intervention in it - has changed. This is largely due to developments in the communications media. Prior to 1939, Australians had little choice but to rely on newspaper and radio reports from 'Home'. The invention of photo-journalism, the documentary film and - later - television and all the subsequent improvements in communications technology changed all this, opening up the profession to many young, adventurous souls.
Few of the reports attempt to explain what caused the particular war - to what extent Australia, or the British Empire, or our allies, may have contributed to the conditions that sponsored the aggression. Was this just resignation to the karma of the situation or acceptance of the maxim: 'once a war, to reason is treason?'
What Art Is - and Isn't: An Aesthetic Tract
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![Eyewitness: Australians Write From the Front-Line by [Garrie Hutchinson, Monica Attard, C.E.W. Bean, Wilfred Burchett, Pat Burgess, Tony Clifton, W.H. Downing, G.H. Fearnside, Cameron Forbes, Ion Idriess, Charles Jager, Betty Jeffrey, George Johnston, Frank Legg, Hugh Lunn, Irris Makler, Gilbert Mant, John Martinkus, Paul McGeough, Gary McKay, Alan Moorehead, Lindsay Murdoch, Ray Parkin, Rohan Rivett, E.J. Rule, Peter Ryan, Kenneth Slessor, Geoffrey Tebbutt, Osmar White, Chester Wilmot]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ygUbIROTL._SY346_.jpg)
