Introduction

My last packmush is a Papua New Guinea recruits who have been training over here for the past six weeks prior to my departure back to Australia. They started singing when the Saints go marching in. I've educated them and they're now saying Kilda's Saints supporters. There are hundreds of stories, videos and songs from Aussie soldiers and their counterparts from Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the Pacific that can be found online. And it speaks to the finely threaded personal connections that exist between Australia and soldiers from the Pacific. These are long standing bonds going back over decades. Connections now maintained through social media and WhatsApp accounts when 20 or 30 years ago they would have been maintained through email letters