The authors of these books all saw action in France during the Great War.

Goodbye to All That is classified as biography. Graves (born in 1895) was a classics scholar best known for his re-creation of ancient Rome, I, Claudius. While still a student he enlisted to delay having to go to Oxford University. Three months later he was in the trenches.

In 1915 he "went up to the corpse-strewn front line".

Throughout his book he also relates the soldiers' conversations. He reports an absence of religion and patriotism among the men, and outlines the differences between being under shell fire and under rifle fire. Kind words for generals and officers are rare; an officer reprimands a private - at the front - for walking with his hands in his pockets.

He praises the Germans and has no respect for the French. A soldier suggests they are fighting on the wrong side.

The men he fought with have accepted the fact that they are all likely to die. He describes atrocities - on both sides - including some perpetrated by Australians.

After the war he "was still mentally and nervously organised for war. Shells used to come bursting into my bed at midnight, even though Nancy shared it with me; strangers in daytime would assume the faces of friends who had been killed. When strong enough to climb the hill behind Harlech (Wales) and revisit my favourite country, I could not help seeing it as a prospective battlefield."

Beginning with Regeneration, Pat Barker has written a trilogy of books about soldiers suffering post traumatic stress in England after the Great War.

Frederic Manning (b. 1882), in The Middle Parts of Fortune, says the events he describes are real but the characters fictitious.

Manning, an Australian living in England when World War I began, enlisted in the English Light Infantry. He saw action on the Somme and at Ancre in 1916. Reluctantly, he wrote the first version of The Middle Parts of Fortune. It was published anonymously in 1929. Manning died in 1935 and it was not until 1946 that he was identified as the author.

Much of the story is of the confused troop movement behind the lines and the descriptions of action, when it comes, is a shock to the reader. There is plenty of dialogue between the soldiers - displaying their emotions and opinions.

"...they (the command) seem to go from saying that losses are unavoidable, to thinking that they're necessary, and from that, to thinking that they don't matter."

There is a telling scene when, after an action, the survivors assemble and account for the men who are missing. The survivors tell of what they saw of those who were killed in the action.

The men in Manning's troop admired the Australian soldiers for their lack of respect for officers. The book ends on a solemn tone. "...Fritz (the Germans) began to send a lot of stuff over in retaliation for the raid. They (British soldiers) sat there silently: each man keeping his own secret."

Leonard Mann (1885), in a brief Foreword to Flesh in Armour, writes "No individual soldier is referred to in this book. The characters have been created only out of the conglomerate."

Flesh in Armour was first published in 1932. Mann had a clerical job in Melbourne when he enlisted. He arrived at the Western Front in 1917. His novel follows a platoon from that time until the end of the war.

The story begins with the activities of the soldiers in London, then their deployment behind the lines in France. Some in the platoon have a period back in England recovering from wounds. Then they return to the front. There is a detailed account of a successful raid and a series of actions culminate in the final battles of the war.

Behind the lines members of the platoon fraternise with the French. They resent having to carry out drill, and perform menial tasks: loading coal and moving duckboards, before returning to the front.

The platoon sergeant reads a message from Lieutenant-General Monash, giving details of the support the platoon will receive. He praises the troops and exhorts them for an extra effort in what will be a "memorable battle". The reaction to the message from one soldier is "you know what you can do with that, sir".

Along with the graphic descriptions of war, the book deals with desertion, cowardice, mutiny and suicide.

The final words of Flesh in Armour are thought-provoking. "And so the infantry of the A.I.F. laid aside their armour and became, what remains of them, just the sort of fellows you know - or so they seem."

There are cheap, modern paperback editions of these three books available.