When Children are Cannon Fodder

Too young to shave and still wearing short pants, boys as young as 13 lined up and lied about their age to volunteer in the Second World War. These boys must have forgotten the horrors their fathers and grandfathers endured in the First World War or not understood their true impact. Paul Byrnes shares some of these tragic and deeply moving personal stories with Paul Daley, a journalist and author with an abiding interest in history and national identity.

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Paul Byrnes is a film critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He was director of the Sydney Film Festival for 10 years, until 1998. His bestseller, The Lost Boys, about underage ANZACs in the First World War, won the Indie Award for Best Illustrated Book. Sons of War is his second book.

Paul Daley is a Sydney-based author, essayist and multi-award-winning journalist who writes about history, Australian national identity and Indigenous culture in his column ‘Postcolonial’ for The Guardian. He is the author of On Patriotism, the political thriller Challenge, and his latest novel Jesustown.

When Children are Cannon Fodder

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