reflecting his background as a journalist, Bean concentrated on both the ordinary soldier and the big themes of the First World War. The smaller size of the Australian Army contingent (240,000) allowed him to describe the action in many cases down to the level of individuals, which suited his theme that the achievement of the Australian Army was the story of those individuals as much as it was of generals or politicians. With his interest in the Australian character, Bean used the history to describe, and in some way create, a somewhat idealised view of an Australian character that looked back at its British origins but had also broken free from the limitations of that society. As cited by Inglis, Bean later wrote in “In Your Hands, Australians”: "It was character which rushed the hills at Gallipoli and held on there during the long afternoon and night, when everything seemed to have gone wrong and there was only the barest hope of success..." In compiling the official history archivist Piggott has recorded that “Bean and his research assistants ‘digested’ an outstanding quantity of official and personal records.” Bean’s paper to the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1938, “The Writing of the Official History of Great War – Sources, Methods and Some Conclusions” provided a list of forty main classes of records on which the work was based. One of the sources was the 45,000 responses to the 60,000 questionnaires (“Roll of Honour” Forms) sent out in 1919 to the “next of kin of the fallen”, for the personal footnotes of the histories which, as Bean recorded, “have been noted by critics as an interesting and peculiar feature of the work”. In the matter of maps illustrating the text, Bean also recorded that “the Australian history adopted its own system” with the creation of detailed “tiny scale” maps able to be inserted into the margin of the relevant page of the history: “It was the only means by which we could illustrate practically every movement described … on its own page (thus avoiding) the necessity for numerous large maps, likely to be quickly torn and lost”. The first two volumes of the history, The Story of Anzac, appeared in 1921 and 1924 respectively. Bean wrote both volumes, together with the next four on the A.I.F. in France. He edited the remaining six and, with H. S. Gullett, annotated the photographic volume