It’s taken distinguished military historian and author Peter Stanley 30 years to get his latest tome on to the bookshelves, writes ROD HENSHAW.

It’s not that Prof Peter Stanley is a slow writer, quite the contrary. The Sherrin, described as a novel of sport and war, was ready for the printing presses decades ago but was scotched when the publisher at that time folded.

It was only recently that the Canberra historian dusted off the manuscript and it’s seen the light of day, via Big Sky Publishing.

The Sherrin was born during Peter’s early days at the Australian War Memorial, where he started work as a junior clerk in 1980, eventually rising to principal historian.

The novel is set on the fictional Pacific Island of New Aachen in 1945 and centres on a group of war correspondents, photographers and artists reporting on the campaign against the Japanese.

So how does the reference to the Sherrin football, so familiar to Australian Rules devotees, become enmeshed in the World War II?

“In my case, with difficulty, because I don’t really take an interest in sport.” Peter says.

“I’m often inspired by photographs and I’ve seen lots of photographs of Australians playing football on the islands in World War II. I realised that one of the things about sport is (the way) that people hold their passion and devotion to their football teams. It’s like a religion.

“So, it occurred to me that the relationship between the militia and the AIF, the two arms of the Australian Army, that rivalry could be expressed not just in abuse when they meet each other on the track, or whatever, but on the sporting field.

“The idea of combining a subject that I knew pretty well – war – with a subject I didn’t know at all – sport – would make sense in this case.”

While coming to grips with the intricacies of the mighty game of Aussie Rules would be a challenge for the uninitiated, the rich veins of material available to him during his time at the Australian War Memorial, made that part of his work a comparative walk in the park. 

War correspondents, photographers and artists covering wars often find themselves at or near the centre of the action and their writings and images must be carefully crafted to accurately portray the reality of what they’re witnessing for their end consumers.

Not a great deal is written about those non-combatants who find themselves at the front line. Prof Stanley has gone to great lengths to fill that void, albeit in a fictional, yet believable story, complete with the tensions which inevitably arise. Again, his war memorial days played a contributory role in achieving that goal.

“The war memorial’s collections are created by these people. It’s the war artists’ paintings, the war photographers’ photographs and the war correspondents’ reports,” he says.

“These people were shaping the way we understood war. There are challenges in that because a war correspondent is employed to tell a good news story.

“The war artists are a bit more ambiguous because they’re not told what to paint. They can put their own individual artistic stamp on it. So the whole point of fiction is drama, and here’s the drama because you’ve got different ways of representing war.”

So, what’s all this got to do with the game of Australian Rules and the Sherrin football? It comes down to an attempt to diffuse the many tensions that are evident between the AIF soldiers who volunteered to be there and the much-maligned militia personnel, or conscripts, who didn’t have a choice.

“These two forces were very different and there was antagonism between them. The AIF abused the militia as “Chockos” – they melt in the sun. They called them “koalas” because they weren’t to be exported or shot, so there was a lot of resentment there.”

Meanwhile, the correspondents were caught in the crossfire of this intense rivalry, which threatened to boil over on to the front line. In a desperate attempt to boost morale, the brigadier initiates a game of Australian Rules played with the island’s only Sherrin. That game would either simmer the tensions or intensify them.

The Sherrin, by Prof Peter Stanley, is available in bookshops now, but will be formally launched at the Book Cow, Kingston, 5pm, April 1.