The German planes patrolled in hunting squads. They flew fast fighting craft streaking across the sky in tight formation. The greatest of them was the Red Baron, the deadliest ace on the Front. He’d shot down twenty-one of our planes in a single month. And now we were right in his firing line.
Ace (Alex) has always been fascinated by planes, so the opportunity to work on them for the army is enough to get him to sign up for the army, even though his parents and family want him to stay home, and are against the war. Back home, his sister Maggie, is leaving school and entering the workforce, finding her voice as a young woman as she misses her brother.
1917 is the fourth title in Scholastic’s Australia’s Great War series. Set in England and the Western Front as well as home in Melbourne, the story offers one man’s experiences of the first world war, as well as tracing the opposition to the war which grew as it progressed, including the role of women including Vida Goldstein.
Both a moving, absorbing story and a useful first person insight into Australia’s involvement in World War 1.
Australia’s Great War: 1917, by Kelly Gardiner
Scholastic, 2017
ISBN 9781743622506