Download or read book Great Australian World War II Stories written by John Gatfield and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True stories of Aussie courage and mateship in World War II from the annals of the RSL From the annals of the RSL come these riveting true stories, written by World War II Diggers, POWs, nurses and other eyewitnesses and capturing the impact of war on those who took part. With eyewitness accounts ranging from the Fall of Singapore to the Kokoda Track, and from Greece to the Middle East, in the air and at sea, these stories bring the Australian experience of World War II to life with humour, pathos and vivid detail. In these pages, you'll find memories of the Japanese POW camps, the Burma Railway, Sandakan, air raids on Berlin, life as a Rat of Tobruk and so much more. Collected in one volume for the first time, these stories are a must-read record of the Australian experience of World War II.
Download or read book Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War written by Garth Pratten and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War, Garth Pratten explores, for the first time, the background, role and conduct of the commanding officers of Australian infantry battalions in World War II. Despite their vital role as the lynchpins of the battlefield, uniting the senior officers with the soldiers who fought, the battalion commanders have previously received scant attention in contemporary military history. This book redresses the balance, providing a gripping, meticulously researched and insightful account that charts the development of Australia's infantry commanding officers from part-time, ill-prepared, amateurs to seasoned veterans who, although still not professional soldiers, deserved the title of professional men of war. Drawing on extensive and original archival material, Pratten recreates battle scenes and brings to light many diverse personalities. It is a story of men confronting the timeless challenges of military leadership – mastering their own fear and discomfort - in order to motivate and inspire their troops to endure the maelstrom of war.
Download or read book At the Front Line written by Mark Johnston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the Front Line draws on a plethora of letters, diaries and documents written by over 300 Australian soldiers in the field to present a picture of the hardships and triumphs of their wartime experience. Mark Johnston analyses the suffering of front-line soldiers caused not only by the opposing force, but also by the conditions imposed by their own army. The book details the physical and psychological pressures of life at the front and shows how soldiers survived or surrendered to unbearable environments, fear, boredom and the constant threat of impending death. The myths of mateship and equanimity are brought under scrutiny. Much hostility can be explained by competition between ranks and the perceived hostility of superiors. The author investigates the immense strain that led to many breakdowns and the characteristic forebearance that saw so many others through.
Download or read book The Toughest Fighting in the World written by George H. Johnston and published by Westholme Pub Llc. This book was released on 2011 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “No other writer has turned out a book on the fighting in New Guinea that can match Mr. Johnston's. Superior literary quality projects this work far in advance of those earlier and more hasty accounts. Mr. Johnston is a young Australian war correspondent who lived through most of the action he describes. The reader will know that from the first page and is apt to find himself tensely hunched up as he is carried into the jungles by this writer's extraordinary reporting and artistry. As Mr. Johnston himself admits, the title sounds bombastic and the sensitive book purchaser might well shy from it. This would be a mistake, since the title is thoroughly honest.”—New York Times “It is a book of episodes which are fitted together into a pattern that tells his story in compelling fashion. Mr. Johnston is a brilliant descriptive writer and the full flavor of this extraordinary battle is in his book.”—Saturday Review of Literature Following their attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, the Japanese invaded New Guinea in early 1942 as part of their attempt to create a Pacific empire. Control of New Guinea would enable Japan to establish large army, air force, and naval bases in close proximity to Australia. The Australians, with American cooperation, began a counterattack in earnest. The mountainous terrain covered with nearly impenetrable tropical forest and full of natural hazards resulted in an exceedingly grueling battleground. The struggle for New Guinea, one of the major campaigns of World War II, lasted the entire war, with the crucial fighting occurring in the first year. In The Toughest Fighting in the World, first published in 1943, Australian war correspondent George H. Johnston recorded the efforts of both the Australian and American troops, aided by the New Guinea native people, throughout 1942 as they fought a series of vicious and bitter battles against a determined foe. In one of the classic accounts of combat in World War II, the author makes a compelling case that the hardships endured by the soldiers in New Guinea from both nature and the enemy were among the most severe in the war.
Download or read book Fallen Sentinel written by Peter Beale and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of the sweeping conquest of Western Europe by Hitler's mighty Panzer Divisons in WWII, Australia produced 66 cruiser tanks - the Sentinel tank - but none ever took the field of battle. The story of Australian tanks in WWII portrays governments under pressure and bureaucratic bungles that saw opportunities lost and precious resources squandered when the nation was under greatest threat. This careful dissection of government process in the crucible of war is a rare gem in an age when most wartime histories focus on the front-line soldier.
Download or read book Great Australian World War II Stories 16pt Large Print Edition written by John Gatfield and published by . This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True stories of Aussie courage and mateship during World War II. From the annals of the RSL come these riveting true stories, written by a host of ordinary Australians - Diggers, POWs, nurses, entertainers, sailors, airman and many more - that capture the impact of war on those who took part. With eyewitness accounts ranging from the Fall of Singapore to the Kokoda Track and from Europe to the Middle East, these stories bring the Australian experience of the Second World War to life with humour, pathos and vivid detail. There's the ordeal of the 13 survivors of the sinking of HMAS Yarra as the sharks took their mates; life in the Japanese POW camps, Sandakan and on the Burma Railway; taking part in RAAF air raids on Berlin; a glimpse of life as a Rat of Tobruk - and much more. Collected in one volume for the first time, this is a must-read chronicle of Australians at war.
Download or read book Fighting the Enemy written by Mark Johnston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fighting The Enemy, first published in 2000, is about men with the job of killing each other. Based on the wartime writings of hundreds of Australian front-line soldiers during World War II, this powerful and resonant book contains many moving descriptions of high emotion and drama. Soldiers' interactions with their enemies are central to war and their attitudes to their adversaries are crucial to the way wars are fought. Yet few books look in detail at how enemies interpret each other. This book is an unprecedented and thorough examination of the way Australian combat soldiers interacted with troops from the four powers engaged in World War II: Germany, Italy, Vichy France and Japan. Each opponent has themes peculiar to it: the Italians were much ridiculed; the Germans were the most respected of enemies; the Vichy French were regarded with ambivalence; while the Japanese were the subject of much hostility, intensified by the real threat of occupation.
Download or read book Brisbane and World War II written by Barry Shaw and published by Boolarong Press and Brisbane History Group. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brisbane and World War II is the Brisbane History Group’s twenty-fourth volume of papers. It comprises the majority of papers presented at the seminar, ‘Brisbane’s Second World War’ held on 27 August 2011. For continuity and thematic reasons, the volume is divided into three sections. The first focuses predominantly on the home front, the second on front line activity and the third on various ways in which the war is recorded and remembered. The first section considers: • the heightened activities on the Brisbane River during World War II • the operations of the Advanced Land Headquarters in and around the University of Queensland • the significance of indicator loop technology as a defensive strategy against submarines • the US construction of an ordnance storage facility on Mount Coot-tha • the upgrading and strategic importance of Fort Lytton • the military and civilian roles undertaken by women Section two examines: • the exploits of the US submarines based in Brisbane • the valiant and dogged defence of Tobruk by the 2/15th Battalion during the Easter Battle in 1941 • the trials, torments and triumphs of the men of the 61st Battalion who finally halted the advance of the Japanese army at the Battle of Milne Bay • the achievements of Kenneth Fraser, who was responsible for effectively organising the treatment of casualties from the Middle East campaigns Finally, the third section relates: • the story of the creation of a war memorial for the 2/9th Battalion and its two dramatis personae, a Czech sculptor and his subject, an Aussie digger • the struggle to obtain heritage listing for Eagle Farm’s Hangar 7, a significant World War II facility • the importance of researching the military archives of the US in order to gain a better understanding of Brisbane during World War II. Written by amateurs, professionals and academics, the book presents a fascinating insight into Brisbane’s contribution during and after the tumultuous years of World War II.
Download or read book War at the End of the World written by James P. Duffy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A harrowing account of an epic, yet nearly forgotten, battle of World War II—General Douglas MacArthur's four-year assault on the Pacific War's most hostile battleground: the mountainous, jungle-cloaked island of New Guinea. “A meaty, engrossing narrative history… This will likely stand as the definitive account of the New Guinea campaign.”—The Christian Science Monitor One American soldier called it “a green hell on earth.” Monsoon-soaked wilderness, debilitating heat, impassable mountains, torrential rivers, and disease-infested swamps—New Guinea was a battleground far more deadly than the most fanatical of enemy troops. Japanese forces numbering some 600,000 men began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the Empire’s strategy to knock Australia out of the war. Allied Commander-in-Chief General Douglas MacArthur committed 340,000 Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Australian, Dutch, and New Guinea troops, to retake New Guinea at all costs. What followed was a four-year campaign that involved some of the most horrific warfare in history. At first emboldened by easy victories throughout the Pacific, the Japanese soon encountered in New Guinea a roadblock akin to the Germans’ disastrous attempt to take Moscow, a catastrophic setback to their war machine. For the Americans, victory in New Guinea was the first essential step in the long march towards the Japanese home islands and the ultimate destruction of Hirohito’s empire. Winning the war in New Guinea was of critical importance to MacArthur. His avowed “I shall return” to the Philippines could only be accomplished after taking the island. In this gripping narrative, historian James P. Duffy chronicles the most ruthless combat of the Pacific War, a fight complicated by rampant tropical disease, violent rainstorms, and unforgiving terrain that punished both Axis and Allied forces alike. Drawing on primary sources, War at the End of the World fills in a crucial gap in the history of World War II while offering readers a narrative of the first rank.
Download or read book Semut written by Christine Helliwell and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2021-07-02 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: March 1945. A handful of young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island’s indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most have barely encountered Asian or indigenous people before, speak next to no Borneo languages, and know little about Dayaks, other than that they have been – and may still be – headhunters. They fear that on arrival the Dayaks will kill them or hand them over to the Japanese. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face. So begins the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret operation launched by the organisation codenamed Services Reconnaisance Department – popularly known as Z Special Unit – in the final months of WWII. Anthropologist Christine Helliwell has called on her years of first-hand knowledge of Borneo, interviewed more than one hundred Dayak people and all the remaining Semut operatives, and consulted thousands of military and other documents to piece together this astonishing story. Focusing on the operation's activities along two of Borneo’s great rivers – the Baram and Rejang – the book provides a detailed military history of Semut II’s and Semut III’s brutal guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, and reveals the decisive but long-overlooked Dayak role in the operation. But this is no ordinary history. Helliwell captures vividly the sounds, smells and tastes of the jungles into which the operatives are plunged, an environment so terrifying that many are unsure whether jungle or Japanese is the greater enemy. And she takes us into the lives and cavernous longhouses of the Dayaks on whom their survival depends. The result is a truly unique account of the encounter between two very different cultures amidst the savagery of the Pacific War.
Download or read book On All Fronts written by Jim Haynes and published by Dogwise Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From North Africa to the home front, the big part played by a small nation"--Cover.
Download or read book Aftermath written by Richard Reid and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A photographic history of the aftermath of the Second World War, focusing on the experiences of Australian service men and women.
Download or read book Australia s Secret War written by Hal Colebatch and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hal Colebatch's new book, AUSTRALIA'S SECRET WAR, tells the shocking, true, but until now largely suppressed and hidden story of the war waged from 1939 to 1945 by a number of key Australian trade unions against their own society and against the men and women of their own country's fighting forces at the time of its gravest peril. His conclusions are based on a broad range of sources, from letters and first-person interviews between the author and ex-servicemen to official and unofficial documents from the archives of World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 virtually every major Australian warship, including at different times its entire force of cruisers, was targeted by strikes, go-slows and sabotage. Australian soldiers operating in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands went without food, radio equipment and munitions, and Australian warships sailed to and from combat zones without ammunition, because of strikes at home. Planned rescue missions for Australian prisoners-of-war in Borneo were abandoned because wharf strikes left rescuers without heavy weapons. Officers had to restrain Australian and American troops from killing striking trade unionists.
Download or read book We Were There written by John Barrett and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author's dedication A RECONNOITRE 1 Snapshots 2 Typical academic bullshit 3 One army, two armies GROWING UP 4 Family, fun and faith 5 Learning and working 6 Belonging JOINING UP 7 The thing to do 8 Getting their measure SERVING 9 Taking it as it came 10 'In places I did not like to be' 11 Soldiers good and bad 12 Frankly and personally OLD SOLDIERS 13 'A strange sensation' 14 Snapshots Thanks Index
Download or read book On Radji Beach written by Ian W. Shaw and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Singapore fell dramatically to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, hundreds of people scrambled to leave. Amongst the evacuees were 65 Australian nurses who boarded coastal freighter "Vyner Brooke" which Japanese bombers sank. The largest group of nurses that made it to shore gathered at Radji Beach. Eventually the shipwreck survivors surrendered to the Japanese rather than slowly starve to death. The Japanese did not accept their surrender and divided the Europeans into three groups and killed all in turn. The Australian nurses were in the third group, and 21 of them died in a hail of bullets as they walked into the waters off the beach. There was one survivor, Vivian Bullwinkel, and she went on to survive the various camps and diseases that took away several of her friends.
Download or read book Australians at Home written by Michael McKernan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best-selling Australians at Home were the first books to study the Australian home front, during World War I and II, in depth and detail, putting the lives, sufferings and grief of Australian women and children in the forefront of the war experience. Perfectly pitched, they reach the classic general reader, whilst breaking new ground in the writing of Australian military and social history.
Download or read book Fallen Sentinel written by Peter Beale and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of the sweeping conquest of Western Europe by Hitler's mighty Panzer Divisions in WWII, Australia produced 66 cruiser tanks - the Sentinel tank - but none ever took the field of battle. The story of Australian tanks in WWII portrays governments under pressure and bureaucratic bungles that saw opportunities lost and precious resources squandered when the nation was under greatest threat. This careful dissection of government process in the crucible of war is a rare gem in an age when most wartime histories focus on the front-line soldier.
