Complete and unabridged, with 60 full-page plates by Vasily Vereshchagin, Théodore Géricault and Juliusz Kossak. Soldiering by a Gordon born in Spain: a boyhood across the Pyrenees, a brush with the Carlist war and the young King Alfonso, the Royal Artillery, Ireland in its unruly years, a voyage to New Zealand, and then a career building the defence forces of South Australia, sending contingents to the Boer War, and — by four days — missing the command of the division Australia offered in 1914. J. M. Gordon wrote without literary ambition, which is the book's value: he is plain about what he did and about what he missed. Sixty plates of horses, mules and horsemen by painters including William Brockedon and Juliusz Kossak run through a life spent in the saddle from Spain to South Australia.