Bravado, shame, sorrow and hilarity were some of the emotions felt by Australian servicemen and their families during the wars Australians fought in the twentieth century. While voluminous histories, biographies and fictionalised narratives have been shaped around the key events of these conflicts, much of the minutiae of everyday wartime remains lost and unrecorded.

This selection of short stories attempts to capture these fleeting moments before they are lost forever. The ordinary people who populate these pages are crafted from snippets of conversation, letters and anecdotes, that having once found voice can now hopefully echo.