Even though the Battle of the Somme ended 108 years ago today, the iron harvest from the surrounding fields continues.

Today the French Department of Mine Clearance still recovers about 900 tonnes of unexposed munitions every year. Approximately 630 French minesweepers have died handling such munitions.

When General Douglas Haig closed down the offensive on 18 November, the Allied and German armies had hurled tens of millions of shells at each other and suffered around one million casualties. For Australia, the toll was intolerable with 23,000 soldiers killed or wounded at Pozieres to capture a few miles of lunar landscape.

The Unknown British Warrior interred in Westminster Abbey in 1920 was meant to honour the whole Empire’s missing. Yet, Australians were divided about whether or not their government should repatriate its own unknown soldier. ‘London is the seat of the British Empire,’ reasoned one veteran, ‘and I think that Australia should be content to know that a soldier of the British Empire is buried in the abbey.’ Another veteran disagreed, arguing that the burial of an unknown soldier in London was insufficient, ‘owing to its distance from the outlying parts of the Empire’.

By the 1990s, new factors supported the entombing of an unidentified Australian soldier. First, the seventy-fifth anniversary of Armistice Day was approaching. Second, the prestige of the British Empire had dimmed. And, lastly, the number of surviving war veterans had diminished. The entombing of an unknown Australian soldier would act as a communal farewell to the Anzacs.

After months of negotiations, government officials agreed to exhume and reinter an unidentified Australian soldier from France into the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial on 11 November 1993.

On a quiet November day, a small team gathered at the Adelaide Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneux, randomly selected a grave and then delicately exhumed the soldier’s remains. The presence of Australian badges and uniform confirmed that the skeletal remains were those of an Australian. One observer noted that the soldier’s boots appeared good enough to walk in.

An unknown Australian soldier had been exhumed after 75 years of rest, enlisted back into the nation’s service, duty-bound for eternal anonymity.

To purchase a signed copy ‘The Nameless Names: recovering the missing Anzacs.’ go to https://scottbennettwriter.com/shop/
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In 2010 the Australian War Memorial retrieved 305 dusty cardboard boxes from its archives. In these boxes were 32,000 files – each containing the harrowing correspondence between the Australian Red Cross inquiry bureau and an anguished family of a missing soldier.

What was remarkable about the bureau’s letters to families, was that tens-of-thousands of them carried Vera Deakin’s signature.

Vera was the bureau’s honorary secretary throughout the Great War, firstly in Cairo and then in London. Vera and her volunteers unrelentingly searched for answers on behalf of families of missing soldiers.

Emma McQuay always believed that her son George would return home from France, even though he had been listed as missing since 1916.

When the war ended, Emma visited the docks and searched the faces of the homecoming soldiers hoping to see George. Emma attended every Anzac Day service. As she watched the veterans march by, she found herself staring at their faces. This ritual seemed to lift her spirits. She always returned home with a renewed strength, convinced that George would return one day.

Two incidents compelled me to research the Great War’s missing. Firstly, standing beneath the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres that lists 55,000 missing British Empire troops. I felt numbed and unable to penetrate the endless lists to connect with an individual name. And secondly, reading a 1926 article about a French father who climbed the Arc De Triomphe and then dived to his death. He had been tormented by the belief that it was his missing son who had been interred in the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb beneath the arch. The story made me reflect on how the unresolved fate of missing Anzac soldiers must have affected Australian families.

My approach to research is to dive deep and find those hidden facts that no other researcher has bothered to uncover. It’s a bit like gold panning — hours of boredom sifting through tailings, which are suddenly forgotten when you discover a nugget. One of those priceless nuggets was Kath Chapman’s story. I stumbled on it when reading a private family history, which contained an uncaptioned grainy photograph of a woman standing over a white headstone. That photograph helped reveal the mysterious story of Kath leaving Australia in 1920 to grieve at the grave of her beloved Theo Pflaum. That photograph captured for me more poignantly than any other the link between feelings and place.

Pauline Reid’s story was another nugget. She was the wife of a missing soldier I featured in the book, Mordaunt Reid. While Mordaunt’s story was compelling, what was unexpected was the gradual unfolding of Pauline’s story. Research revealed that Pauline travelled to Cairo in her search for Mordaunt, and then onto London, where she worked for the Red Cross Prisoners of War Department. In 1920 she was awarded an Order of the British Empire in recognition of her war work. Remarkably her story also intersected with other characters in the book, such as Vera Deakin.

Often I am most excited about a minor detail I uncover, which helps render a character or scene. It might be Theo Pflaum scratching his name into the soft mortar beneath his homestead in 1910 or Theodor Pflaum’s drawing room carrying the faint smell of cigar smoke.

And finally, no matter how riveting a piece of research is, it must ‘fight for its life’ to survive the editing process.

In early June 1915 Reverend Mr Langley walked from his St Mary’s vicarage in Caulfield to an unfamiliar Currall Road address in Elsternwick. He opened the picket fence gate, walked up the path and knocked on the door. Sixty-five-year-old widow, Mary Reid, answered the door. Langley guided Mary into a room, sat her down and shared the ‘sad tidings’ that her son, Lindsay, had died on the first day of the Gallipoli landings. Mary must have slumped in her chair and stared at that telegram. No doubt, Reverend Mr Langley would have offered Mary words of comfort but she would have no memory of them and would not recall how long he stayed or when he left.

The news of Lindsay’s death overwhelmed Mary. Everything seemed swept away by the hand of fate. Yet, Mary knew that Victorian sensibilities meant that displays of emotion in public were frowned upon. Weeks earlier, Melbourne’s Argus had told readers that they must exhibit the self-control of a ruling race and not let their private sufferings dim their eyes to the glory of those killed for the empire.

From darkened rooms, such as Mary’s, came, throughout 1915, what Gallipoli soldier and poet Leon Gellert evocatively described as the ‘sound of gentle sobbing in the South’.

Discover Mary’s moving story in Scott Bennett’s ‘The Nameless Names: Recovering the Missing Anzacs.’ Available in bookshops on 29 October 2018.

The absolute challenge of working full-time and writing part-time is time management. Every minute devoted to writing must be productive. Here’s what works for me:

1. Set non-negotiable blocks of time for writing.

I have four blocks of time per week when I write. These times are typically late evening or early morning so I can’t be disturbed and I don’t excessively eat into family time. I obsessively adhere to these times irrespective of whether I want to write or not, feel tired or have pressing work deadlines.

2. Clearly set priorities around writing, family, work, socialising and health.

Despite best intentions, 1 or 2 of these important priorities will be compromised by electing to write. Make conscious choices – by choosing to write am I prepared to:

• Be off my game at work because I’m tired?
• Sacrifice quality time with my kids?
• Put on a few extra pounds because I can’t exercise regularly?

Being selfish is an essential ingredient to writing.

3. ‘Steal’ extra blocks of time for writing

I am forever on the lookout for extra blocks of time to write – during flights, in hotel rooms, on family holidays, public holidays, sick days, long car trips, supervising the kids playing in the park. I unashamedly work on my manuscript whenever possible.

4. Get into the writing zone quickly.

With limited writing time, it is important to get into the ‘zone’ quickly. Reading a few pages of good writing by an admired author and having a caffeine fix helps get me into a ‘flow state’ quickly.

5. Set up writing SPRINTs

I set SPRINT objectives for each writing block. This may be: reviewing a certain number of articles, editing a specified number of chapters, or rendering a scene or character. I cannot afford the luxury of ‘writer’s block’. I never set word targets, only writing objectives.

6. Rationalise the reasons why you write.

Self-doubt about choosing to write often plagues my mind, particularly when I sacrifice family time to do it. To combat this, I rationalise why writing is a worthwhile pursuit. For instance:

• If I weren’t writing I’d probably be watching TV – would I prefer to write something I’m proud of or keep up to date with Game of Thrones?
• Writing is a good way to turn off from work.
• It’s better to be at home writing, rather than going to the pub or gambling.

7. Keep detailed supporting notes and references

It will take a part-time writer longer to complete a manuscript than a full-time writer – my books have taken between 4 and 6 years to complete. Early on I was lax in sourcing and referencing material. Subsequently I spent a lot of time backtracking to reference material. Keeping copious and detailed notes will prevent this.

8. Being Obsessive Helps

To improve your writing you must be obsessive about it. You must feel excited about the prospect of getting up at 4.00am on a Sunday morning to write.

9. Brutal Editing

Edit, edit, edit and then edit some more. Every word or idea in your manuscript must ‘fight for its life’ to stay there.

10. Writing is a skill

In my view writing is a skill rather than an innate ability; therefore, with practice and feedback you will improve. Malcolm Gladwell contends that you must practice for 10,000 hours to become proficient at a chosen skill – unless you are writing regularly you’ll never be able to work your way along this skill continuum.