...Cutlack, of The Australian Flying Corps volume of the Official History, himself 'a fine soldier', journalist, and former assistant to the official historian, C.E.W. Bean, (1) wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that



The editor of "With Horse and Morse in Mesopotamia (the Story of the Anzacs in Asia)" has just published one of the finest memorial unit histories of the war which Australians have yet produced. (2)

A.M. Pooley in the Sydney Evening News went even further: 'It is no disparagement of other war books to say that this is the best war history that I have seen from any country'. (3) The unnamed reviewer in The Argus pointed enthusiastically to the book's potentially wide market, noting that it 'is so packed with narratives, diaries, and photographs that it is entitled to rank as a war book with an appeal to the general public'. (4)

So atypical was it of the standard unit history monographs being produced at the time that Pooley's review labels it a 'memory book'--aligning it with the so-called 'soldiers' books' made up of edited collections of contributions from service personnel themselves: articles, poems, anecdotes and illustrations, often augmented with more official material such as photographs and maps. In the Australian context the best known of these were The Anzac Book (1916) and Australia in Palestine (1919); significantly the look and feel of Horse and Morse even closely resembles these two books rather than the usual 'octavo' format of most unit histories. (5)

Nevertheless, Horse and Morse is a unit history or, more accurately, a compendium of various units' histories. Principally it is a record of the service of the various Australian and New Zealand signals units sent out to Mesopotamia (Iraq) from 1916 to support British and Indian units fighting the Turks in that region. In the book's own terms these were the Australian Pack Troop, the New Zealand Pack Troop, the Australian Wireless Squadron, and the Cavalry Divisional Signals Squadron. Officially these units went under a bewildering variety of titles, especially as they evolved and metamorphosed over time. Broadly speaking, however, the separate Australian and New Zealand Pack Wireless Signal Troops, raised in 1915, were absorbed into the expanded 1st (Australian and New Zealand) Wireless Signal Squadron in mid-1916, which in turn became 1st Australian Wireless Signal Squadron in mid-1918 when the NZ personnel were replaced by those of the disbanded Australian Cavalry Divisional Signal Squadron, which had been raised in early 1917 to support the Indian Cavalry Division. (6) In addition, Horse and Morse devotes chapters to the Australians in Dunsterforce, the expedition made up of British and Dominion volunteers sent to Persia (Iran) in 1918; to the Australian Nurses in India, 1916-1919; and to D Troop of the Signals Squadron, which remained behind after the Armistice and took part in the campaign into Kurdistan in 1919, (7) 'the last complete Australian unit that saw active service'. (8) These latter units were included because of their relevance to the general theatre of war being dealt with, and because up to that time there hadn't been any official coverage of their service. (9)

The publicity leaflet announcing 'The Wireless Book is Out!', produced with the imprimaturs of the chairman of the unit committee and the editor, summarises Horse and Morse's varied content well. (10) Besides the 'hundred and fifty pages of absorbing print', there are 'sixty or seventy pages' of pictures 'containing nearly two hundred photographs'; 'almost a hundred' pen sketches of 'souvenirs, maps, menus, badges'; chapters on all the units and locations in which they served; 'twenty-seven pages of humorous and descriptive contributions'; 'a schedule showing where every station was on every day of the campaign'; a 'glossary of Eastern and colloquial expressions'; and importantly, 'nominal roils of all Australians and N.Z.'s who served in the Middle East', including that of the 1st Half-Flight, AFC...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.




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