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PREFACE

The doings of several thousand men and women and a score of units over a period of six years in a number of countries cannot easily be amalgamated in one book; consequently the story is not as smooth as one would wish, and restrictions of space have meant that some detail and colour have had to be omitted. It was originally intended that units would have their own individual histories; then it was decided to combine them in two volumes, and finally these two volumes were condensed into one. Therefore the book has been largely selection and synthesis rather than creative writing page by page.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to those who wrote preliminary narratives of some of the units—among them Sister J. K. [sic: V. O] Tyler (now Mrs. Morten) [sic: delete], A. T. Green, A. Ashley-Jones, R. W. Cawthorn, H. T. George, and H. Brennan; to those who contributed eyewitness accounts and photographs; and to those who helped in the correction of the manuscript or in any other way.

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