Despite Australia’s heavy involvement in wars throughout the twentieth century, few notable war memoirs by Australians have emerged. Frederic Manning (The Middle Parts of Fortune) and Richard Hillary (The Last Enemy) identified as Englishmen, despite being born here. A.B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life and Don Charlwood’s No Moon Tonight are literary benchmarks against which Australian soldier–writers must measure themselves. Allen & Unwin is doing an invaluable job with its extensive series of Vietnam memoirs. Whether any of them will become classics, only time will tell.

Reading O’Farrell’s book took me back thirty years. When I was at school in the 1960s, I belonged to the Army Cadet Corps. Twice a year we travelled to Singleton army base where, under the supervision of non-commissioned officers who had returned from tours of Vietnam, we ran around the bush firing blank ammunition from our .303 Lee-Enfield rifles, and practised ‘Infantry Minor Tactics’. The soldiers probably didn’t take us seriously, but we were mightily impressed by their skills, especially when they ambushed us with modern automatic weapons. Despite the lessons our grandfathers and fathers had learned on the Somme and in New Guinea, Vietnam seemed a great adventure to sixteen-year-olds. How little we knew.