The Story of the 5th Pioneer Battalion AIF
Adelaide, The Collotype Co., Commercial Printers [for the Adelaide 5th Pioneer Reunion Club], 1937.
Quarto, 116 pages with 19 full-page plates plus 2 folding maps.
Blue cloth with the battalion's colour patch (a rectangle, white around purple - here, blue) on the front cover; cloth a little marked and rubbed, and lightly bumped at the extremities; top edge and endpapers a little foxed; endpapers offset; trifling signs of handling; an excellent copy of a very rare book.
The book includes a five-page Honor Roll, and a preface by Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Gordon Carter, DSO (1885-1963), the Battalion's Commanding Officer from August 1916 to the end of the war. The editor was 'late Sergeant "D" Company'. He states in the introductory paragraph to his foreword that he is 'keenly sensible of the fact that probably a book three times larger could have been written, had it been possible to get in touch with the men of the Battalion who were in a position to know well the activities of their various Companies.... The story, such as it is, is correct as to salient facts, and this is entirely owing to the fact that Colonel Carter, soon after his return to Australia wrote a complete Diary of the Battalion's movements and operations from the early days in Egypt to the Armistice'. Herbert Gordon Carter was a very interesting man: consult the 'Australian Dictionary of Biography'. Dornbusch 338; Fielding and O'Neill, page 235; Trigellis-Smith 303.
Item #132767
Price (AUD):
$1,100.00