Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean (1879-1968), historian and journalist, was born on 18 November 1879 at Bathurst, New South Wales. In 1916-18 Bean was in France to observe every engagement of the A.I.F. Some dispatches were published as Letters from France (London, 1917). The historian's task grew larger in his mind. At first he thought of one volume, but in France he conceived a grander work which would be literally a monument to the men of the A.I.F.-'the only memorial which could be worthy of them', he decided, 'was the bare and uncoloured story of their part in the war'.
