Nine Men Who Left Chatswood Oval for Anzac Cove - By Paul Stephenson

There is a photograph that exists only in the imagination. Nine men in the early 1900’s in white flannels, squinting into a Sydney summer sun at Chatswood Oval. Some are bowlers, some batsmen, one a doctor, one a bank clerk, one a grazier who can break in a brumby and ride all day. They are cricketers. They are mates. On Saturday afternoons they argue about field placements and grumble about dropped catches, and when the game is done, they share a beer and talk about next week. Their lives are ordinary in the very best sense of the word; rooted, comfortable, full of small pleasures and easy friendships.

And then the world ends.

Not all at once. It ends in the way that worlds always end for young men in wartime; first with excitement, then with confusion, then with a terror so complete it can never quite be spoken of afterwards.

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