Short and stocky, Chalky has a smiling face and cheerful blue eyes.
Chalky is of the upper working class but his extensive education allows him to fit in where many people of his class would be unable to. However, when among friends he quickly slips back into a broad Australian slang

Chalky was born in 1890, Andrew grew up in Ulverstone, Tasmania, Australia in a time of great change. Australia changed from a colony to an independent nation in the Dominions in 1900 when he was ten and imperial nationalism marked most Australians up to the end of The Great War. He was the fourth son and fourth child of five boys and three girls to a school teacher and a typist who moved to rural Tasmania from metropolitan Melbourne. He grew up among both books and horses, a beautiful time in a beautiful place.

Chalky went to boarding school in Melbourne. When The Great War erupted he like his elder three brothers immediately joined up as many in Australia did, as the desire to 'defend' Great Britain was felt keenly. He took a job as a hospital orderly after school, working in both Tasmania and Victoria, but when war started and the call went out for volunteers he feared he would be enlisted as a medical orderly instead of a trooper like his brothers. But  he volunteered as a trooper in the 29th (Port Phillip Horse) Light Horse Regiment, but to his dismay he was sent first to Egypt which he feared would be a sideshow. Little did he know what was to come.

He learned the horrific face of war at Gallipoli where, alongside British, French, Indian, Canadian and New Zealander troops, he fought in the disastrous campaign that achieved nothing but cost so many lives. To this very day Chalky has a high opinion of Turkish people and a very low opinion of Lord Churchill. It was there that he was given his nickname by his fellow troopers and it was there that he developed his terrible aversion to being snagged in any way and especially having to cross barbed wire. After a disastrous charge across open ground a Maxim bullet tire through his calf and he collapsed on top of a barbed wire entanglement. In his agony he writhed among the wire and it's inch-long barbs stuck into his flesh. His body is heavily scarred from the event. It wasn't until night time that his mates could crawl out to him and cut him free.

He missed the withdrawal from the Gallipoli Peninsula but rejoined his unit in Palestine in time for the victorious drive that pushed the Turks and Germans out. Here he was in his element. Chalky is quite simply a born horse soldier; a dead shot and a sure seat. He took to the cavalry life like he had lived his entire life waiting for this time. He was a quick leaner and rose to the rank of corporal. Chalky is an inveterate optimist and unless barbed wire is mentioned he tends to make light of his war years, preferring not to be reminded of the heat, death and sorrow. He often says 'we had it good in The Middle East; they never gassed us there." He came to like Palestine which was an easy think to do for a member of the British Empire at this time and after the war he was not a little sad to be sent back to Australia.

However times had changed and Chalky with them. Australians resented the high death rates for ANZAC troops in The Great War and blamed the British officer class for them. This was the time when the narrative was strongly 'Lions led by Donkeys' and Australians, still proud to be in the empire but the mood was strongly independent. The Spanish 'flu swept through the nation, killing his parents, two of Chalky's sisters and his only brother to survive the war. Chalky, feeling estranged and unsettled like so many other veterans decided to leave Australia and wander. After sojourning through Britain and western Europe he ended up back in Palestine. Here things were familiar in an odd way. He was a stranger in a strange land but was accustomed to being an outsider here, among other outsiders like himself.

after drifting about a bit he got a job as an aircraft mechanic for an American pilot, Matthew Clancy. Matthew trained Chalky up to be an air-gunner for his aircraft and the two have been involved in a few unusual aerial missions.