Black Diggers

Black Diggers

by

Tom Wright

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Black Diggers makes teaching easy.
The site of a major World War One battle in France, where Australian troops suffered the heaviest losses of anywhere, and where Mick kills a number of German soldiers and Bertie and Tommy get buried alive for three days under the soil.

Pozieres Quotes in Black Diggers

The Black Diggers quotes below are all either spoken by Pozieres or refer to Pozieres. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Australian Nationhood and Indigenous Dispossession Theme Icon
).
Act One Quotes

Your folks do something, over in the West? [BERTIE shrugs] I wouldn’t know where to begin. His you know, his soul will be stuck here. You know what I mean. With all these trees, they will grow here one day all these—what do you call them? Elms and oaks and all that. And all these hedges and the flowers and we don’t know the names of any of them. And when they burn the smoke is different and will lead him a different way.

Related Characters: Bertie (speaker), Tommy
Related Symbols: The Lock of Frank’s Hair
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Black Diggers LitChart as a printable PDF.
Black Diggers PDF

Pozieres Term Timeline in Black Diggers

The timeline below shows where the term Pozieres appears in Black Diggers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act One
Australian Nationhood and Indigenous Dispossession Theme Icon
Racism Theme Icon
War, Violence, and Shell Shock Theme Icon
At the battle of Pozieres in 1916, Bertie and Tommy fail to understand the last words of another soldier, Frank.... (full context)
War, Violence, and Shell Shock Theme Icon
Back at the battle of Pozieres, Mick approaches five surrendering Germans but kills them all when one “ducks to pick something... (full context)
Act Two
War, Violence, and Shell Shock Theme Icon
History, Memory, and the Archive Theme Icon
...among his few possessions, and it turned out he spent three days buried alive in Pozieres. “Acquainted with death,” it made sense that he could not “sleep within walls” after returning... (full context)