STEVE SAILAH

In one of the early chapters of KILLING KITCHENER, I describe a drunken farewell to the battlefields – as the last of the Australians and New Zealanders evacuate the bloody Gallipoli peninsula in December 1915.

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When you read that chapter of the novel, you might imagine it's entirely fictional .

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It's not.

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While Thomas and Snow are made-up characters, they're also composites of many of the World War One veterans I interviewed. 

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Here's how one of them, 'HARRY' BENSON, a stretcher bearer with the 5th Field AIF Ambulance, described the rum way he left Gallipoli:

 

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