Letters from the Coffin Trenches

Based on a fictional exchange of letters during World War I between a New Zealand soldier and his girlfriend back home, this moving novel traces the coming of age of the two young characters and the nation as a whole. As the siege of Gallipoli drags on and wounded soldiers return home, the idealism of the 'Knights of the Round Table' gives way to grim reality.
At the beginning, only Hooter questions the propaganda of the government and the establishment. However, towards the end, Jessica can comment cynically about a well-meaning hospital chaplain: 'Of course (he) has never been to France', while Harry, after talking to the Turkish soldiers, also asks: 'How much of what we are told is lies?'. The camaraderie of the trenches, in which a 'band of brothers' look out for each other, the decency of officers like Captain Fields, and the cowardice and ironic promotion of others like Lieutenant Creel are evocatively described. The most poetic language is reserved for the 'iron storm (that) howled, thick with awful death' around the trenches for months on end.
The futility of war is reinforced by the sad, empty lives of the survivors, Moran and Muller, who lived on into the thirties. The xenophobia, jingoism and Eurocentrism of the early 20th century will seem incomprehensible to many young readers. An older and wiser Jessica points out that all New Zealanders (and by extension Australians?) were confined in 'narrow and safe' coffin-trenches in the pre-war period. The tragedy is that it took a war to inject self-confidence into the country.