This book consolidates the diaries of Thomas William Cure NX15442, an Australian soldier from northern New South Wales. They cover the period from his embarkation in Sydney on 30 August 1940, service in the Middle East and North Africa including the siege of Tobruk and the battles of El Alamein, and his return home on 2 March 1943. The strength of the diaries lies in them being contemporaneous, unfiltered by later experiences and the vagaries of human memory. The transcript of the diaries is as they were written; raw, uncensored and unedited. They portray that during one of the darkest periods in Australian history, ‘keeping calm and carrying on’ was the best way an individual could deal
with a situation of this magnitude. It is as relevant today as it was during the
Second World War. — David Goody