Her privates, we

1882 – 1935

Manning was born in 1882 in Sydney, Australia, and whose father was a one-time mayor. Educated privately, he was thereafter sent to England to complete his studies. In the immediate pre-war years Manning established a reputation as a minor poet and critic among a small circle of intimates. With the outbreak of war in August 1914 Manning enlisted as a Private with the 7th Battalion King's Shropshire Light Infantry, serving in the trenches in France among some of the more bloody battles of the war. In 1929 Manning anonymously published in a private edition his novelised memoirs of the war, The Middle Parts of Fortune, in two volumes. In place of his name he simply listed his army serial number…