Author(s): Ken Catran

Children's Books

"Gallipoli was the first good thing that happened to me." World War I turned Jacko Moran from a sullen, street-fighting slum kid, with a brutal alcoholic father, into a fearless soldier, a decorated war hero and a man who commanded the utmost respect. "They were the only four years I really lived," Jacko reflects from his death bed in Wellington Hospital, 25 years later, when the effects of mustard gas, hard living and the constand running from nightmares have sucked the life from him. Unable to settle after the war, Jacko never reached the heights expected from someone of his calibre. In this often grim, but always compelling, portrayal of a terrible war, Jacko Moran, a peripheral character in Letters From the Coffin Trenches, looks back on the full horrors of the Flanders campaign with a perverse pride. He was the man the enemy feared, the kingpin sniper, the ace hand-to-hand fighter. For ages 13 and older. "The war didn't kill me but the peace sure did."