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HISTORIC TRENTHAM - REVIEW - Book review of Will Lawson's.Historic Trentham. Review © Darcy Waters 2002
Will Lawson through his writing takes us alongside several young men as they go through their basic training at the Trentham military camp. Before he does this however, he quickly explains about how the camp came about. As we follow "Curly" (Horace Barley) and his mates through their training we get to "see" how our First World War soldiers were trained. As their training advances each part of the camp is progressively introduced to us. Through the black and white "plates" in the book we get to see period photos of men undertaking their training. We also see photos of the camp and it's facilities. At the time of writing, World War 1 was still fresh in people's memory and as he says in the foreword, Will Lawson wrote this book to give civilians an ides of what life in a (then) contemporary military training camp was like. Little did he realise that 80 odd years later his book gives us an idea of what the training of our First World War 1 soldiers was like. This book was written during the early years of a military establishment that has been in existence since 1914 in one form or other - even surviving the Defence cuts in the 1990's. Today it bears no resemblance to the camp, as it was in 1914. The Wellington Publishing Company published two editions of Historic Trentham. The First was in 1917 and the Second edition the following year. The front cover on both editions is illustrated (see the cover above). They achieved this by printing the illustration on paper and then gluing it onto the cover. As
this book is out of print keep an eye on the second hand bookshops
and you might be able to find a copy. Alternatively check your public
library (in New Zealand) in case they may have it (to lend). © Darcy Waters 2002
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© copyright Darcy Waters 1999-2003 |
