AUTHOR’S NOTE

*

The life of George Hubert Wilkins (later Sir Hubert) has always been surrounded by myth and secrecy, and much that has been written about him is incorrect. In an attempt to separate fiction from fact, I have avoided dramatising events and I have not invented conversations. I quote directly from original sources whenever possible; often I have had to rely on what people wrote about Wilkins. Information about his time at the Western Front can be gleaned from the diaries of Australia’s official World War I historian, Charles Bean. The diaries and notebooks of Bean are held at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and can be read online via the memorial’s website. Many of the notebooks do not have page numbers, so, when I reference them, I have put ‘pdf’ before the page to indicate that I am working from the online version.

I also quote from private collections of Wilkins’ letters and manuscripts held by Dr David Larson and Michael Ross in the United States. I appreciate that these collections are not available to the public, so, for some of my contentious claims, readers will need to trust my word. Both Ross and Larson have requested I keep their personal details confidential.

Volume XII of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 was published in 1923. This volume is sub-titled Photographic Record of the War, and contains 753 photographs. The majority of the photographs from the Western Front are credited to an ‘Australian Official Photographer’.* I discovered Wilkins’ personal copy of this volume in Michael Ross’s collection, in which Wilkins had pencilled his initials in the corner of the photographs that he took. For brevity, when I reference this book I simply call it Wilkins Volume XII. (Michael Ross has since donated this book to the Australian War Memorial.)

[* In the Official History, photographs are credited to an ‘Australian Official Photographer’, while elsewhere they are usually credited to an ‘Unknown Australian Official Photographer’.]

The Australian War Memorial has over 6,000 official photographs of the Anzacs at the Western Front. They are numbered and usually prefixed with the letter ‘E’. Most of the official photographs can be viewed online, so I regularly direct the reader to examples I write about in the text.* The diaries of Frank Hurley can be read online from the website of the National Library of Australia.

[* About 40 per cent of the E-series photographs were taken after the Armistice.]

With the exception of the final one, Wilkins wrote all the quotations I have inserted at the beginning of each chapter. They are taken from his correspondence, speeches, or books. The final quotation was, supposedly, received telepathically by Harold Sherman, eight months after Wilkins’ death.

Finally, for readers unfamiliar with military formations and acronyms, a brief overview is given before the index.