The Barbarians: A Soldier's New Guinea Diary

The Barbarians: A Soldier's New Guinea Diary is a 1988 memoir/novel by Peter Pinney based on his experiences in World War Two recorded in his diary in 1943.

It was followed by other accounts of Pinney's war service, The Glass Cannon (set in Bougainville in 1944) and The Devil's Garden (in the Solomons in 1945). The books make up a trilogy.

Reception

Army magazine said it "would have to rate as one of the best fictional accounts of a Diggers experience in any war and is highly recommended."

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote "rather than accounts of heroic deeds and remarkable achievements this very personal memoir includes the pettiness and waste, the antagonism of the men towards some of their officers, the waiting and the bloody mindedness."

Other books

• The Glass Cannon: A Bougainville Diary 1944-45 (1990) - based on Pinney's diaries during the Bougainville campaign. The Age called it "extraordinary". The Canberra Times called it "evocative".
• The Devil's Garden: Solomon Islands War Diary, 1945 (1992). The Canberra Times said the book "presents a realistic soldier's-eye view of the bitterness and the tragedy. It concerns itself also with the impact the strangers' war had upon the natives of the Solomon Islands, whose territory was used as the arena."

References