image of person or book cover 303887917643153130.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Hell of a Time : An Australian Soldier's Diary of the Great War
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Philip Owen Ayton was working on the Sydney tramways when the call to join the fight against Germany came. Keen for action, he found himself in the First Field Company Engineers in the First Division of the Australian Imperial Forces.

'Shipped to Egypt, Ayton soon after took part in the Gallipoli landing. ‘I would not have missed this for anything,’ he wrote to a friend. Badly injured, he was sent to England to convalesce and from there joined the campaign in France, where he saw out the war.

'From the start, Ayton kept notes of his experiences, which he would write up in a diary. Plucky, charming and self-deprecating, this son of the new nation records the horrors of trench warfare and his off-duty adventures in Cairo, London and Paris.

'This remarkable story is now published for the first time, a century after the war’s end. Accompanied by a postscript by one of Ayton’s sons and Ayton’s poem about the Gallipoli campaign, A Hell of a Time is a vital and compelling account of the Great War.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 303887917643153130.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 416p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 2 April 2019.

      ISBN: 9781925773422

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Fire & Fury Tom Gilling , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 April 2019; (p. 19)

— Review of Hell of a Time : An Australian Soldier's Diary of the Great War Philip Owen Ayton , 2019 single work diary

'The most celebrated World War I memoirs tend to have been written by junior infantry officers. They include Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That, Siegfried Sassoon’s fictionalised Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Edmund Blunden’s superb Undertones of War.' (Introduction)

Fire & Fury Tom Gilling , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 April 2019; (p. 19)

— Review of Hell of a Time : An Australian Soldier's Diary of the Great War Philip Owen Ayton , 2019 single work diary

'The most celebrated World War I memoirs tend to have been written by junior infantry officers. They include Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That, Siegfried Sassoon’s fictionalised Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Edmund Blunden’s superb Undertones of War.' (Introduction)

Last amended 27 Mar 2020 14:01:59
Settings:
  • Gallipoli,
    c
    Turkey,
    c
    Middle East, Asia,
  • c
    England,
    c
    c
    United Kingdom (UK),
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • c
    France,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • 1914-1918
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