From Simpson’s donkey and the Emu War to Vietnam and Ben Roberts-Smith, Australian military history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did. In his inimitable style, award-winning author Mark Dapin sets the record straight.

Australia has many stories and statues ‘lest we forget’ our military past. But from Simpson’s donkey to Ben Roberts-Smith, our history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did.

The first Anzac Day, for example, was far from being a solemn march – it was a celebration where people dressed as cavemen and dinosaurs, among other things. And is it true that British officers callously dispatched Australian soldiers to their deaths in the Dardanelles, as we’ve been told? Did we really hate the soldiers returning from Vietnam? Were the white-feather women of the First World War fact or fiction?

In his inimitable style, award-winning author and historian Mark Dapin sets the record straight, showing that the reality was often completely different from the myth – and that in celebrating the wrong people we often overlook the real heroes. With deep research and a keen sense of the absurd, Lest reclaims the truth about our military engagements.

‘Thoughtful, meticulous, funny, at times furious, and to veterans at least, kind … Lest is a cry for the truth’ Sydney Morning Herald