Private CRL Smith

Private CRL Smith provides a glimpse into a private's experience with the 18th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force in France and Belgium during WWI. The book is based on the private war diary of Charles Robert Lumsden Smith, with the diary entries set chronologically in the broader context of the war; the events that led up to the outbreak of war, the battles in which Private Smith fought and other campaigns that influenced him or the outcome of the war. The description of the involvement of the 18th Battalion in each of the campaigns is taken primarily from AIF Battalion, Brigade and Division War Diaries and extracts from them are included.

Private Smith was one of the lucky 130, 000 men who survived in Europe and the Middle East at the end of the war. However, 60,000 men never returned; they lay in war cemeteries and crude graves on the Gallipoli Peninsula, along the plateaus and valleys near the River Somme and on the plain of Flanders.