Jeff Popple reviews three books about wartime service and sacrifice for Anzac Day. More of Jeff’s reviews can be found on his blog: murdermayhemandlongdogs.com

Life So Full of Promise by Ross McMullin

Scribe, $49.99

Ross McMullin’s Life So Full of Promise is an impressive achievement, and a moving portrait of a generation lost to war. A sequel to his acclaimed Farewell, Dear People, it is a prodigiously researched, multi-biography of those affected by the First World War. Through the stories of everyday people, McMullin constructs a fascinating social history of early 20th century Australia, as well as a moving account of the horrors of war. It contains a mass of detail, all of which is compellingly conveyed by McMullin’s lucid and engaging narrative style to very good effect. A major contribution to our understanding of Australia’s past.

Dispatch From Berlin, 1943 by Anthony Cooper and Thorsten Perl

NewSouth, $34.99

Equally fascinating is Anthony Cooper and Thorsten Perl’s Dispatch From Berlin, 1943. In December 1943, five journalists, including two Australians, were selected to join a British night-time air raid on Berlin. They were each assigned to one of the 400 Lancaster bombers that flew on the dangerous mission. Only two made it back safely, while one was captured after parachuting out of his doomed aircraft. Dispatch From Berlin, 1943 is an engrossing account of the raid and its aftermath, using the journalists’ eyewitness reports, as well as accounts from German pilots and civilians caught up in it. An outstanding piece of military history.

The War Nurses by Anthea Hodgson

Penguin, $32.99

Anthea Hodgson’s The War Nurses is a powerful novel inspired by true events that were remarkably suppressed until 2019. In 1942, a group of 65 serving nurses were among the last people to be evacuated from Singapore on the SS Vyner Brooke. When the ship was destroyed by bombs, 21 of the nurses were washed ashore on Bangka Island where they were raped and murdered by Japanese forces. Hodgson’s great-aunt Minnie was one of those killed, and this moving novel tells the emotional story of the nurses who were killed and those who survived in prisoner of war camps. Unforgettable.