‘A great consolation?’

Twenty veterans are gathering in an airport lounge in Sydney. They are old men now, all of them in their nineties, but as young men they joined the Second AIF and fought in some of its most historic battles, first in North Africa, then in the Pacific. Their journey is a pilgrimage – that is the term each of them prefers to use. They are returning to El Alamein on the seventieth anniversary of the battle, and their visit will conclude with a service in the same cemetery Kitty Gahan visited some 60 years earlier. These old men will lay a wreath by the Memorial to the Missing, not far from where Captain Studley Gahan's name is inscribed. And no doubt they too will remember someone dear to them.

Jean Parry is the only female veteran joining the party. As Elsie Jean Grenda she served with the 2/7th Australian General Hospital in North Africa, and tended the wounded during the Battle of El Alamein. Historically, women have been underrepresented in Anzac pilgrimage, as we've seen. The pilgrimage to El Alamein will again prioritise the experience of men.

This pilgrimage is one of the last such journeys to be undertaken. Age has wearied these men and, even with their entourage of medics and carers, few World War II veterans are capable of sustained international travel. The writing of this book is timely. The history of pilgrimage has come to a crossroad as the story of the war itself passes from living memory into history.