An image of the cover can be viewed at http://bit.ly/28TItrC or put ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda Allen and Unwin’ into an image search and you will also see some of the internal illustrations.

Though Bruce, who I have met, has illustrated many books using his dominant right hand, he instantly chose to dawn all the illustrations for this book with his left hand, which he finds can give a more expressive portrayal of emotions. For me, the slightly fragmented nature or ‘wiggliness’ of some dawn lines also highlights the fragility of the human body and the precarious situation faced by all service people on a battlefield.

The small things of the cover add together to become a big thing — the fabric-feel, the deeply debossed lettering indented into the surface and the art as a foretaste of what we will discover on the pages. The design is a lesson in itself for would-be illustrators. The action takes place from left to right, as we normally read text, and the main character soldier stares towards us and draws us in to his situation in a narrow trench. We are forced to make eye contact with him by the position of his eyes on the cover — at an intersection of lines that could be drawn a third of the way across from a side, and a third of the height of the picture — and many lines in the drawing lead our eyes to his, such as the sloping hillside horizon, the edges of boulders and the cleft in the trench wall. Is the soldier warning us to stay away from the danger to be faced and the sights he is likely to see, reflecting on the futility of war and loss of life, or asking us to join him in the story and support him in action, as a mate? We know we must stay with him through thick and thin. Masterful!