[1] Both of his parents had served with the British Imperial military forces in World War I, his father as a commissioned infantry officer, and his mother as a nurse.
In 1941 he enlisted as a Private into the 2nd Australian Imperial Force, subsequently being commissioned as an officer and going on to see active service in the New Guinea campaign in World War II.
In the late 1950s he attempted to establish himself as a fiction writer, publishing several novellas under the pseudonyms 'Carl Dekker' and 'Mark Napier', but without commercial success.
His views, generally expressed in a choleric fashion, in this regard were detailed in his work British Butchers & Bunglers of World War One (1998), and he appeared in a British Broadcasting Corporation 'Timewatch' series television documentary on Field Marshal Earl Haig, entitled Haig: The Unknown Soldier (1996), proffering the same historical commentary.
[8] While medically convalescing in Sydney in 1943 during World War II he met his future wife, Hazelle (died 1997), who was serving as a Red Cross nurse.