Odyssey of the Unknown AnzacOdyssey of the Unknown Anzac
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Book, 2018
Current format, Book, 2018, , Available .eBook
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Ten years after the end of World War I, the Sydney Sun reported that an unknown Anzac still lay in a Sydney psychiatric hospital. 'This man . . . was found wandering in a London street during the war,' reported the paper. 'He said he was an Australian soldier. Beyond his first statement that he was a Digger, he has not given any information about himself.' Thousands of people in Australia and New Zealand responded to this story and an international campaign to find the man's family followed. The story tapped into deep wells of sorrow and uncertainty which had been covered over by commemorations of Anzac heroism and honourable national sacrifice. More than a quarter of the Anzac dead had no known resting place. Might this be someone's missing son? He had suffered shock after being buried under sandbags as a result of shelling. The medical fraternity believed his insanity was proven by loss of memory, mental depression and mental hebetube [dull & lethargic]. They stated he was silent and melancholy; incapable of recognising his position or of keeping count of time, takes no interest in anything. The medical board attributed it to the stress of the campaign and that it was a permanent disability with total incapacity. David Hastings follows this one 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. Sadly Mr McQuay, who came to be known as 'New Zealand's living unknown soldier', spent the rest of his life in and out of Porirua mental asylum until he died at Stratford 28 December 1951 and is buried at Kopuatama Cemetery, Stratford.
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- Auckland, New Zealand : Auckland University Press, 2018., ©2018
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