Description
Title: In The Line of Fire – Gunnedah & Districts Role in the Great War
Author: Ron McLean and Val Fearby
Condition: Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2014
ISBN: 9780646902784
Cover: Hard Cover without Dust Jacket – 208 pages
Comments: In The Line Of Fire tells the story of those with a Gunnedah connection who sailed for the war zone – 150 didn’t come home and many of those who did had to carry physical and emotional scars for the rest of their lives.
The book tells the stories of 400 Gunnedah district soldiers and is the culmination of 20 months of work, includes 91,000 words and 330 images.
Information was also gathered from Maryborough in Queensland, Strathalbyn in South Australia, Western Australia and as far away as Wellington in New Zealand.
In launching the book, Ron McLean said it was an exciting project and very uplifting.
“The research phase was truly wonderful. It was so easy to drift away to another world during the research phase, and the hours just seemed to tumble into each other,” Ron said.
“For me, having the opportunity to research WW1, the Great War, was not a chore – it was priceless.”
At the outbreak of WW1, 100 years ago, Gunnedah and the surrounding villages had a population of less than 3000 people – more or less isolated from the world. Virtually no-one had been overseas.
“When war broke out, local people enlisted in droves in defence of the Mother Country,” Ron said.
The realities were very different, however, and 16 million people were killed – nine million troops and seven million civilians.
Australia lost more than 60,000 – 150 of them from the Gunnedah district.
In the Line of Fire tells the often heroic, fascinating and fateful stories of those with a Gunnedah connection who sailed for the war zone – whether it was Gallipoli, North Africa and the Western Front in France and Belgium.
It also includes coverage of the Gunnedah Shire Band’s historic trip to France and the 2014 ANZAC Day service.
