Using letters between soldiers and their loved ones, parents, sweethearts, wives or children, this book traces the emotional and psychological ways by which New Zealanders made sense of the upheavals of war. It shows movingly and graphically that NZ soldiers were not inarticulate and insensitive 'hard men' but kept their sense of life before and after the war by the messages of love, hope and longing that they sent back home. This is the first title in the new series AUP Studies in Cultural and Social History edited by Caroline Daley and Deborah Montgomerie, a series of richly illustrated medium-length books, reflecting New Zealand's distinctive and sometimes quirky