By the end of 1914, a newly formed Australian Imperial Force (AIF) had accepted and deployed more than 20,000 Australian volunteers overseas to train and prepare for combat. The majority of them were sent to Egypt to train, thousands of miles and a hemisphere away. In the following four years, a further 290,000 followed. Most of these soldiers served as infantrymen – the great majority of them on the Western Front – and by the end of the conflict, they had earned a reputation as a highly effective and professional component of the wider British Army. This book examines the substance of this reputation. In particular, it examines the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 as a way of determining if this reputation is justified. This is where, in 1918, for perhaps the only time in the nation’s history, Australian infantry engaged the main enemy in a decisive theatre and defeated it.