On the Warpath


Edited by Robin Gerster and Peter Pierce. Melbourne University. 368pp. $34.95.

Reviewer :: CPL Cameron Jamieson

If you understand what Weary Dunlop means when he says the real world lies elsewhere, then this book is for you.

Australia seem obsesed with a wonderlust mentality driven by our sense of isolation from rest of the world. For generations Australians this craving different countries and new experiences has been melded with overseas military service, creating a culture of military tourists.

On the Warpath is a fantastic compilation of more than 50 short Australian military travel stories and essays written by service personnel, war correspondents, journalists and war pilgrims.

The list of writers is phenomenal: Banjo Paterson, C.E.W. Bean, General Sir John Monash and Nancy Wake. Even the director of Gallipoli, Peter Weir, is included.

I cannot recommend this book enough to people who enjoy Australian military history and have travelled overseas.

Many of the impressions and feelings expressed by the writers are so familiar to the reader, making it a book that you can both relate to and enjoy.

Don’t expect to find too much detail of the actual fighting; instead this is a book that deals with the experices of encouning strange new lands.

Political correctness also has no place in this book as raw and blatant racial prejudices of many authors are laid bare to the reader.

In the end the reader is left with a feeling that, after all the travel, Australia is perhaps the greatest place in the world to live.

This is highlighted in a story of Gallipoli veterans who in 1965, after visiting the battlefields to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landings, “wanted to get back across the world as fast as Qantas could carry them”.