Odyssey of the Unknown Anzac

Ten years after the end of World War I, the Sydney Sun reported that an unknown Anzac still lay in a Sydney psychiatric hospital. Thousands of people in Australia and New Zealand responded to this story and began an international campaign to find the man’s family. The story tapped into deep wells of sorrow and uncertainty which had been covered over by commemorations of Anzac heroism and honorable national sacrifice. More than a quarter of the Anzac dead had no known resting place. Might this be someone’s missing son? David Hastings follows this one previously unknown Anzac, George McQuay, from rural New Zealand through Gallipoli and the Western Front, through desertions and hospitals, and finally home to New Zealand. By doing so, he takes us deep inside the Great War and the human mind.

David Hastings began working in journalism as a copy boy on the Melbourne Sun in 1970 and ended in 2013 as editor of the Weekend Herald. He is the author of Over the Mountains of the Sea: Life on the Migrant Ships, 1870–1885, Extra! Extra! How the People Made the News, and The Many Deaths of Mary Dobie.