The remarkable story of Philip Owen Ayton is published for the first time, a century after the war's end. Working on the Sydney tramways, when the call to join the fight against Germany came Philip was keen for action, and he found himself in the First Field Company Engineers in the First Division of the Australian Imperial Forces. From the start, Ayton kept notes of his experiences, which he would write up in a diary. Plucky, charming and self-deprecating, this son of the new nation records the horrors of trench warfare and his off-duty adventures in Cairo, London and Paris.