The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19,

Collett, Herbert Brayley, 1877-1947Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
527K words
Chapters
53

Tags

English Originals Documentary LiteratureMilitary Military HistoryMilitary StrategyOverseas CampaignAustralian ForcesSoldier LifeComradeshipWorld War IBattlefield ReportDocumentary NarrativeSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19,Author: Collett, Herbert Brayley, 1877-1947,Language: English, Class: D501: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: World War I (1914-1918), Release Date: May 5, 2008

Editor's review

This book is a record of the war service of the 28th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, from 1915 to 1919, written by Herbert Brayley Collett, who served with the unit. Its value lies not in grand narrative military history but in showing, from the perspective of a single battalion, concrete daily experience from Gallipoli to the Western Front: marches, garrison duty, casualties, and supply. It offers first-hand material for studying the ANZAC forces and mid-level combat units of the First World War. The prose bears the mark of its era, is documentary in approach, and is dense with detail; it suits readers interested in WWI military history, Australian military history, or the history of soldiers' experience as a source text. It is best read as a primary document rather than a popular narrative; with maps and background knowledge of the war, the movements of units and the course of campaigns become much clearer. The free Project Gutenberg electronic edition is easy to search and excerpt, making it suitable for specialized research or classroom source reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the Gallipoli and Western Front chapters of a general WWI history before entering the details of this book.
  2. While reading, mark unit positions and march routes on a map to understand spatial relationships.
  3. Make thematic excerpts—casualties, supply, garrison life—to build your own source notes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53

FAQ

Is this book a fictional novel or a war record? This is a war record written by a participant and is documentary source material, not a fictional novel. It centers on the wartime experience of the 28th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, and its narrative is primarily factual and unit-focused; it should be read as a historical source.
Can I read this book directly without any WWI background? You can, but it will be demanding. The book is dense with detail and involves unit organization, campaign place names, and military terminology. It is much smoother if you first gain basic background on WWI and the Gallipoli campaign.
Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation? It can be used as a source lead, but citations should note the edition and be checked against authoritative campaign histories and archives. The Project Gutenberg edition is convenient for searching the original text and is suitable for preliminary excerpting and topic-based reading.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Collett, Herbert Brayley, 1877-1947 Author · Australian · 1877–1947

Herbert Brayley Collett (1877–1947) was an Australian military officer and librarian. Public information about him is limited, and details of his life are known mainly through the single work of his held in this collection. That book, The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, recounts the wartime service of an Australian unit in the First World War in the form of a unit history. Works of this kind were usually based on operational records and the accounts of participants, emphasizing chronology, the course of battles, and personnel, and they offer a useful primary-style narrative for the study of the Australian Imperial Force and the military history of the First World War. Collett's dual background as soldier and librarian is reflected in his concern to preserve and organize the record of the war.