For one Anzac, it was just another day at the office. Describing the Australian counterattack at Lone Pine on Gallipoli in the second volume of his colossal Official History of the First World War, C.E.W. Bean ushers onto narrative centre-stage a certain Captain A.H. Scott, ‘who in private life was a clerk in Dalgety and Company’s Sydney office’:

Scott … was a cheerful and dashing soldier. He at once called to the men: ‘Who’ll come with me?’, and leaping over the new barrier without the least knowledge of what was in front of him, ran straight past the junction of the Traversed Trench to Lloyd’s own barricade. There he came upon a party of Turks busily throwing bombs over the barrier … He shot three or four, causing the rest to draw back round the bend of the trench.