John Alfred Charles Laffin was born on 21 September 1922 at Mosman, Sydney, Australia.[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.[2]
After the war, Laffin worked for a number of newspapers and magazines and began his own feature service and editing unit. In the mid-1950s he relocated with his family to the United Kingdom, where he resided for 40 years, earning a living initially as a school master, teaching History, English and Geography in secondary schools, one of which was Mayfield CollegeinEast Sussex (where he taught in the 1960s whilst living in Herstmonceux). 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.[4]
In the early 1960s, while still working as a teacher, he began writing military histories, which after a few years sold well enough to allow him to abandon teaching and earn a living as a professional military historian and writer, as well as intermittent pieces of journalism in the field. Laffin was a prodigious author, producing works - many of which possessed a personally opinionated viewpoint of their subject matter - regularly for publication on a range of modern military history subjects, ranging from conflicts in the Middle East, the Falklands War, and several works on World War II, but the central subject that he returned to repeatedly throughout his career over the next 40 years was the British experience of World War I. He travelled extensively in Europe, especially along the old battlefields of World War I's Western Front.
In the field of World War I history he was trenchantly of "The Donkeys" school of thought on the subject of British Generalship, castigating the British Army High Command's conduct of military operations in the war as being wantonly profligate with the lives of its soldiers. 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.[5]
Laffin was the instigator behind the creation of the Australian Corps Memorial Park, at Le Hamel, France, dedicated to the Australian troops who served on the Western Front in World War I.[6] He also founded the Families & Friends of the 1st Australian Imperial Force, a society dedicated to maintaining the historical and cultural memory of the men of Australia's primary expeditionary force that fought in World War I.[7]
Laffin returned to reside in Australia from the United Kingdom in failing health in 1995. He died in Canberra on 23 September 2000 at the age of 78.[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.[9] "He returned to Australia in 1995 but Hazelle developed heart problems and died in early 1997. He is survived by his partner, Anny two daughters, Bronwen and Pirenne, and a son, Craig."[10]
