Book description
Dando-Collins adroitly interweaves a compelling family history with the
broader canvas of the Anzacs. Crack Hardy is a fine and important book.
This is the true story of three Australian soldiers, the Searle
brothers. One brother was killed at Gallipoli, another on the Western
Front. One came home a decorated hero. Viv, a gifted poet who was
planning to be a clergyman before the war, became a deadly efficient
sniper. Ray shot himself and was charged with desertion. Ned was a true
Australian larrikin, up for anything, and the black sheep of the family.
The Searle boys had to crack hardy, as they fought in one grueling
campaign after another - from the first wave of the Gallipoli landings
to Lone Pine, from Ypres to Messines and Hill 60 in Flanders, to bloody
Somme battles at Mouquet Farm, Bullecourt, and Hamel, with their
brothers and mates falling all around them. Back home in an Australian
country town, their mother, father, sisters and remaining brother also
had to crack hardy, as the bad news from the front just kept coming, and
coming. Told from the heart by the Searle brothers' great-nephew,
award-winning author Stephen Dando-Collins using the letters and
journals of the Searle brothers and remembrances of other family
members, Crack Hardy is a compelling book that defines Australia and
Australians during the making of our nation on the far-flung
battlefields of the First World War. Stephen Dando-Collins is the
author of the acclaimed Captain Bligh's Other Mutiny and a successful
series of popular histories about the legions of ancient Rome published
in the US, UK, and Australia: Caesar's Legion, Nero's Killing Machine
and Mark Antony's Heroes. Pasteur's Gambit was shortlisted for the
science prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and won the
Queensland Premier's Science Award. Crack Hardy, his most personal
history, received wide acclaim. Mistaken Identity tells another episode
of previously undiscovered Australian history.
