Lessons from a grim war

Leon Davidson. Photo / Supplied

Leon Davidson was determined not to downplay the horrors of war just because he was writing for a younger audience. In his new book, Zero Hour, the award-winning author and primary school teacher plunges readers headlong into life on the Western Front, where the Anzacs endured the hell of what seemed like a never-ending war.

Davidson suspects the German's "hurricane bombardments", whereby the enemy would drop concentrated shelling, would have been one of the toughest tests the New Zealand and Australian Army Corps endured.

"I still can't understand how people could live through shelling like that," says Davison on the phone from Wellington. "Sometimes these shells would be landing every yard. It was just relentless."

Davidson was moved to write the book, which traces the Anzacs' campaign against the Germans from 1914-18, when he learned that his grandfather fought in World War I. Like many veterans, he had seldom spoken about his experience.

"It's a gripping story," he says, "and there's nothing out there that tells the story for a younger age group."

Whereas much is known and written about the Anzacs' harrowing baptism of fire in Gallipoli, it is perhaps less well known that they went on to endure the heaviest attacks in history during their protracted campaign against the Germans. They were gassed, drowned in mud and forced to sleep in sleet-covered trenches near the bodies lying in no-man's land, where rats lived in the ribcages of the dead. In four years, three million soldiers were killed and 11 million wounded. Many of those fortunate enough to survive found it interminably difficult to adjust to life back home.

Davidson's first historical book, written during a 10-year stint in Australia, was Scarecrow Army, in which he integrated fictional personal stories into a detailed account of life in Gallipoli. It was the non-fiction winner at the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2006, and an Eve Powell Non-Fiction winner for the Children's Book Council of Australia.

He is also the author of Red Haze, about the experience of New Zealanders and Australians in the Vietnam War. The book received the LIANZA Elsie Locke Non-Fiction Award at the LIANZA Children's Book Awards. Davidson has always been drawn to war, "because it's the ultimate challenge," he says.

His interest in history stayed with him until university, where he studied ancient Rome and Greece before embarking on a varied career that includes working as a furniture-maker, a chicken-plucker and a telephone salesman, before becoming a teacher and writer.

Davidson was compelled to write Zero Hour after realising how little he knew, not just of his grandfather's experience, but about WWI in general. He used source material from the National Library, interviews with war veterans and diaries and letters to loved ones to research the stories.

The book traces the Anzacs from their exciting early training days in Egypt to their hellishly long campaign through Belgium and France, in particular, their bloody journey through the Somme, Bullecourt, Messines, Ypres and Passchendaele. Combining first-person accounts and the raw facts of war, the narrative surges through the battle with an intelligent documentary style that confronts the reader with the psychological toll of warfare.

"It was strange for the soldiers," Davidson writes. "One moment they were ducking from Parapet Joe, the next they were drinking watered-down beer, laughing, singing and briefly forgetting the war."

"Not patronising [younger readers] can be quite difficult because you have to present complex information in a simple way," says Davidson. "I try not to be too emotive with the language and let them form their own opinion. Ultimately, what I want them to do is think 'what if I was there? How would I handle this? How would I get through this? How would I react? What would I do if I saw my friends killed? How would I cope with having done that?"'

Aside from depicting the sheer physical torment of war - from the sleepless nights of shelling to the heartbreak and emotional scarring the Anzacs suffered - Zero Hour also touches on the contradictions of military life. When they weren't engaged in battle, the Allies and the Germans occasionally encountered one another on friendly and/or dignified terms: the ceasefire on Christmas Day, 1914, for instance.

Seeing the enemy dead caused a gamut of reactions in that they realised they were experiencing the same misery; the soldiers would often search the pockets of the dead for letters or photographs that could be returned to the families. The book also examines the tensions surrounding the introduction of conscription in New Zealand, following the many deaths in the Somme.

"I found it amazing how even though the soldiers had all these nerves and the fact they started to question the war itself and their reasons for being there, they were still prepared to go over the top. It's one thing not to believe in a cause and to still charge into danger."

Although swearing was removed, Davidson has largely left in the graphic details of life on the Western Front.

"I thought it was important that we see what the soldiers saw and I would hope they would want young people to understand what the horrors of war are, so at least if it came around again they'd be equipped with knowledge."

His own students are years 7 and 8 (ages 11-13).

"I knew they knew absolutely nothing about it. I think only one person put a hand up when I asked who knew about the Western Front or the Battle of the Somme. It's a sad thing there isn't much history taught."

Davidson hopes to next write a fiction book for young adults based around bullying, set in the present day but incorporating elements of WWI.

Zero Hour, Text Publishing, $25