Media: BOOK - paperback, 320 pages
Author: M. Larsson
Year: 2009
ISBN: 9781921410550
Other: b&w photos, appendixes, bibliog, index
Publisher: NSW University Press

'Shattered Anzacs' tells the untold story of thousands of Australian families who welcomed home disabled soldiers after the First World War. It offers a poignant account of the impact of physical injury and shell shock upon returned soldiers, and explores the profound and lasting consequences of disablement for their kin in the 1920s and 1930s.

Drawing the reader into the emotional interior of family life, it evocatively brings to light the daily struggles of Australia’s 90,000 'changed men', and reveals the significant burdens carried by their family members.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes on sources
Introduction: Family stories
1. War wounds as family wounds
2. Returning to family life
3. Making ends meet
4. Family relationships
5. Families and mental hospitals
6. Tuberculosis: The ‘family disease’
7. Burnt out soldiers and the 1930s Depression
8. Postwar death, grief and memorialisation
Conclusion: The shared legacies of war disability
Appendix 1: Recruitment methods for oral history informants
Appendix 2: Profiles of oral history informants
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews:

''Who really looked after our damaged Diggers? It was their families. Marina Larsson forces us to rethink the aftermath of the Great War and poignantly reveals sufferings that have been hidden" - J. Hirst

"Shattered Anzacs is a landmark study of Australians at war. Marina Larsson is to be congratulated on her discriminating use of the historical imagination and deft evocation of evidence. Her work reminds the reader of the unresolved and ongoing cost of war, to the generation who experienced it and opens up new and exciting areas of inquiry. An impressive Achievement" - B. Scates