Download or read book The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda written by Brian Freeman and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Freeman knows the Kokoda Trail better than almost any other living Australian. The former Specialist Forces soldier has set records running the length of it and led dozens of treks along it for his adventure travel company. But in more than a decade of involvement with the trail, even he never suspected the secret held by the villagers of Alola, a tiny community perched high in some of the trail's most difficult terrain. Since 1942 the villagers had passed down a secret from generation to generation - the location of a lost battlefield, where advancing Australian forces and retreating Japanese soldiers had fought in the Second World War. It was one of the bloodiest engagements of the campaign, yet inaccurate references in maps drawn after the fighting meant that when the tide of war moved on, the battlefield was forgotten and quickly reclaimed by the jungle. After years of friendship, in which Brian earned the villagers' trust, they decided to let him in on the secret, knowing that such a revelation required a trustworthy person to help them manage the intense interest they suspected would follow. Their decision was vindicated as Brian authenticated and mapped the battlefield with professional archaeologists and helped set up a trust to act as guardian for the special site. Part fascinating military history, part gripping archaeological mystery, part exciting adventure, The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda is the story of the trail and that long-ago battle - how it was fought, then lost and found.

Download or read book Field Guide to the Kokoda Track written by Bill James and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kokoda legend lay dormant for six decades, during which the rampant New Guinean jungle reclaimed many of its historic sites. Now, after years of painstaking research, and with the aid of the fast-thinning ranks of both Australian and Japanese veterans, Bill James has uncovered these 'lost battlefields', plus more. This book is intended to be an historical preparation for people who want to, or are actually planning to, walk the Kokoda Track. It can also be read as a 'stand-alone' story and will appeal to people who simply want to learn more about the history of Kokoda, and understand more about the legend that surrounds it. The book includes many telling excerpts from the hand-written diaries and memoirs of the men who were actually there in the thick of battle, eyewitnesses to these extraordinary times. The aim of this book is not to write another analytical history of the campaign. While providing some historical background and personal perspectives, its main objective is to be a battlefield guide-a companion to the history books. It attempts to correctly identify and describe the localities of many of the 1942-43 battles, as well as other places of wartime significance-encampments, supply dumps, aid posts, hospitals, etc.-used by the Australians, from Port Moresby in the south to the Gona-Sanananda-Buna beaches in the north. It also attempts to locate the path of the wartime Kokoda Track over the Owen Stanley Range, from Owers' Corner (south) to the village of Kokoda (north of the range). Of the 96?kilometres that can be covered by current-day trekkers, approximately 10 of them are not part of the original track used during the campaign-these more recent tracks were cut to access new village sites and gardens, leaving the old wartime track unused and overgrown. Virtually all Australians who go on trekking tours to Kokoda have local Papuan guides, and many are accompanied by Australian trek leaders. However, the practical interpretation of historical information available to these guides is extremely limited. This carefully researched book is intended to fill this void. It is hoped this will make the trek a far richer experience. For those wishing to fully understand the history of the Kokoda Track, the book will be of great interest. For those intending to undertake the gruelling trek, it is essential reading, and includes a waterproof trek map (540 mm x 408 mm 2-sided). The revised edition now includes the grave or memorial information for the fallen. .

Download or read book The Kokoda Campaign 1942 written by Peter Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-02 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fighting on the Kokoda Track in World War II is second only to Gallipoli in the Australian national consciousness. The Kokoda campaign of 1942 has taken on mythical status in Australian military history. According to the legend, Australian soldiers were vastly outnumbered by the Japanese, who suffered great losses in battle and as a result of the harsh conditions of the Kokoda Track. In this important book, Peter Williams seeks to dispel the Kokoda myth. Using extensive research and Japanese sources, he explains what really happened on the Kokoda Track in 1942. Unlike most other books written from an Australian perspective, The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and reality focuses on the strategies, tactics and battle plans of the Japanese and shows that the Australians were in fact rarely outnumbered. For the first time, this book combines narrative with careful analysis to present an undistorted picture of the events of the campaign. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the truth of the Kokoda campaign of 1942.

Download or read book The Path of Infinite Sorrow written by Craig Collie and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese.

Download or read book Hell s Battlefield written by Phillip Bradley and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2013 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first single volume history to cover all the battles fought by the Australians against the Japanese in Papua New Guinea.

Download or read book Kokoda written by Karl James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Courage. Endurance. Mateship. Sacrifice. These values, engraved in stone at the Isurava war memorial, have become synonymous with the Australian experience during the Kokoda campaign of 1942. The story of Kokoda and of the fighting in Papua has been told and retold in books, films and documentaries, but these popular narratives rarely explore beyond this one campaign. Kokoda: Beyond the Legend critically assesses not only the campaigns in Papua and their context in the wider lengthy Pacific war, but also the actions of senior Australian, American and Japanese military leaders. Moving beyond the legend, this book addresses the central question of why Kokoda holds such a significant place in Australian military history. In this book, Karl James brings together eminent military scholars to reassess the principal battles from both Allied and Japanese perspectives, providing readers with a more complete understanding of one of the major turning points in the Second World War.

Download or read book Walking Wounded written by Brian Freeman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Freeman, former special forces soldier, Kokoda Track record-breaker and discoverer of the lost battlefield of Kokoda, had a belief that walking the track could have a special benefit for wounded Australian servicemen and the families of those killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. In 2012, he proved his theory right by organising two treks that produced some extraordinary results for those who took part - from the former commando who lost both legs in Afghanistan to the father who lost his son there. Walking Wounded is the inspiring accounts of the men and women on those treks - how walking in the footsteps of those who fought on the track has helped them piece their lives back together. It's also a deep insight into their service, the actions that saw them wounded and the slow process of recovery and rehabilitation that rarely features in our news stories. Written with compassion and true empathy, Walking Wounded is as important as it is moving, and paves the way for the treks with veterans and their families to continue.

Download or read book The Kokoda Campaign 1942 written by Peter Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fighting on the Kokoda Track in World War II is second only to Gallipoli in the Australian national consciousness. The Kokoda campaign of 1942 has taken on mythical status in Australian military history. According to the legend, Australian soldiers were vastly outnumbered by the Japanese, who suffered great losses in battle and as a result of the harsh conditions of the Kokoda Track. In this important book, Peter Williams seeks to dispel the Kokoda myth. Using extensive research and Japanese sources, he explains what really happened on the Kokoda Track in 1942. Unlike most other books written from an Australian perspective, The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and reality focuses on the strategies, tactics and battle plans of the Japanese and shows that the Australians were in fact rarely outnumbered. For the first time, this book combines narrative with careful analysis to present an undistorted picture of the events of the campaign. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the truth of the Kokoda campaign of 1942.

Download or read book Retaking Kokoda written by David W. Cameron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarô, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanley ranges, Imita Ridge. Horii to his distress was then given orders from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo that he was to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton’s Crossing and Eora Creek to stop any Australian advance through the mountains. The Japanese, unknown to the Australians evacuated Ioribaiwa Ridge just before they launched their attacks and to their amazement on storming the heights, the Australians encountered no resistance – the Japanese had gone. This, however, did not mean the fighting on the Kokoda Track was over, far from it. Three more desperate actions would be fought by the Australians and Japanese, before the decisive battles for the Japanese beachheads could be decided – the battles for Templeton’s Crossing, Eora Creek, and finally the Oivi-Gorari positions on the northern lowland plains. Just 15-kilometres east lay the Kumusi River, the last geographical barrier before reaching the strongly fortified Japanese beachheads themselves.

Download or read book Those Ragged Bloody Heroes written by Peter Brune and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the Australians on the Kokoda Trail - a story told through the eyes of the Australians who fought there, many of whom have now passed away....

Download or read book Fighting the People s War written by Jonathan Fennell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

Download or read book Prague How To Pack written by Lex McAulay and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kokoda campaign of 1942 is one of the classic battles in Australian military history, and has taken its place alongside the landing at Gallipoli, the charge of Beersheba, and the defence of Tobruk. It was also the first time that Australians fought to defend their homeland against direct threat, without the protection of great and powerful friends. In Blood and Iron, Lex McAulay tells the full story of the campaign - from the beginning, when an untried force of Australians went to battle with a Japanese army which had swept aside all before it in its relentless drive through southeast Asia, to the victorious conclusion, with the Australians emerging as victors. The Japanese side of the campaign is also described in some detail. Blood and Iron is also the story of personal heroism and courage, and a refusal to give way, as the men battled the elements, the terrain, the jungle and the enemy.

Download or read book The Battles for Kokoda Plateau written by David W Cameron and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Japanese attacked us, they mortared us, they shelled us...they did everything.' On 21 July 1942, a large Japanese reconnaissance mission landed along the north-eastern coastline of Papua, it would soon turn into an all-out attempt to capture Port Morseby. This is the powerful story of the three weeks of battle by a small Australian militia force, the 39th Battalion, supported by the 1st Papua Infantry Battalion and the Royal Papuan Constabulary, to keep the Japanese at bay. Outnumbered by at least three to one, they fought courageously to hold the Kokoda Plateau - the gateway to the Owen Stanleys. Critically short of ammunition and food and stranded in the fetid swamps and lowland jungles, they did everything they could to keep the Kokoda airstrip out of Japanese hands. Not far away, and desperately trying to reach the Australians, were two groups of Anglican missionaries trapped behind enemy lines. With each passing day the parties grew, joined by lost Australian soldiers and downed American airmen. Theirs is a story of tragedy and betrayal. Using letters, diaries and other first-hand accounts, from friend and foe alike, leading military historian David W Cameron, has for the first time written a detailed, compelling and provocative account of what occurred at the northern foot of the Owen Stanleys in late July and early August 1942. These are stories that deserve to be firmly embedded into the Kokoda legend.

Download or read book The War Within written by Don Tate and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ...a memoir that is at once dramatic, disturbing, sexually charged, and often very funny, but ultimately a moving portrait of a man who has found the inner strength to overcome.... - Paul Ham, international journalist and author This is a complex, virtuoso analysis of an Australian life written by an unabashed and unrepentant authoran acidic dissection of the role that genes and environment have in developing a persons character, as well as a sauntering chronicle of social analysis. In turn, we follow the life of the author as he comes to terms with being a disaffected youth, a patriotic but naive infantryman in the Vietnam War, and an alienated, disabled veteran struggling with male status anxietyapparently inexhaustible in its capacity to cause suffering. Along the way, Tate examines the dark crevices of the male psyche as he battles inner demons and the unconditional love of his beautiful Christian wife, Carole. Above all, this memoir is a celebration of the human condition and of a man with a can-do, cavalier attitude to life and his desire to rise above mediocrity. An outstanding contribution to Australias rich heritage of memoir.

Download or read book Victory in Papua written by Samuel Milner and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-07-11 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a companion volume to the one on Guadalcanal in the series on the war in the Pacific. Both record the operations designed to halt the advance of the enemy toward the vital transpacific line of communications with Australia and secure Australia as a base. Success in Papua and Guadalcanal, achieved in February 1943, put the Allied forces in a position to neutralize Rabaul and, this accomplished, to advance to the Philippines. The present volume concentrates on the action of one United States Army division. In telling the story of a comparatively limited number of troops, the author has been able to present the combat experience of small units in sharper focus than has been possible in most of the other full-scale campaign volumes. The campaign abounds in lessons. Of these one of the most vital is the frequent necessity for all commanders to evaluate their own actions by asking themselves this question: "How could I have helped, how should I have helped, how can I help my subordinates to accomplish their assigned tasks?"

Download or read book To Kokoda written by Nicholas Anderson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-05 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Japanese war machine swept through South-East Asia in early 1942, it was inevitable that conflict would reach Australian territory on the island of New Guinea. The ultimate Japanese target was Port Moresby. Conquering the capital would sever communication between Australia and her American ally and allow Japanese air power to threaten Australia’s northern cities. When a seaborne invasion was thwarted at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Nankai Shitai landed in Papua on 21 July and lunched an overland attack. Having captured the village of Kokoda with its vital airstrip, the Japanese headed for Port Moresby, traversing the treacherous Kokoda trail that winds across the might Owen Stanley Range. The Australian Army was ill prepared to confront the Japanese. Poorly equipped, undertrained, and unaccustomed to jungle warfare, the untested militia battalions were the first to face the battle-hardened invading forces. Later, when veteran AIF brigades were rushed forward to bolster the militia, they also fell in the path of the Japanese onslaught. But the over-extension of supply lines and disaster on Guadalcanal eventually cruelled Japanese aspirations and the Kokoda campaign became a bloody and protracted struggle as the Australian troops fought to drive the Japanese off the Owen Stanleys and out of Papua. While the front-line troops were engaged in a bitter fight for survival, a power struggle erupted at the top of the Allied command hierarchy resulting in a series of sackings, the competing ambitions of the Allied commanders clouding their judgement at a critical time. It was under these conditions, against a determined enemy and on one of the harshest battlefields on earth, that the Australian forces began to learn the crucial lessons that would be needed to break the back of the Japanese Army in New Guinea.

Download or read book Battle Scarred written by Craig Deayton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-03-07 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The dead and wounded of the 47th lay everywhere underfoot". With these words Charles Bean, Australia's Official War Historian, described the battlefield of Dernancourt on the morning of the 5th of April, 1918, strewn with the bodies of the Australian dead. It was the final tragic chapter in the story of the 47th Australian Infantry Battalion in the First World War. One of the shortest lived and most battle hardened of the 1st Australian Imperial Force's battalions, the 47th was formed in Egypt in 1916 and disbanded two years later having suffered one of the highest casualty rates of any Australian unit. Their story is remarkable for many reasons. Dogged by command and discipline troubles and bled white by the desperate attrition battles of 1916 and 1917, they fought on against a determined and skilful enemy in battles where the fortunes of war seemed stacked against them at every turn. Not only did they have the misfortune to be called into some of the A.I.F.'s most costly campaigns, chance often found them in the worst places within those battles. Though their story is one of almost unrelieved tragedy, it is also story of remarkable courage, endurance and heroism. It is the story of the 1st A.I.F. itself - punished, beaten, sometimes reviled for their indiscipline, they fought on - fewer, leaner and harder - until final victory was won. And at its end, in an extraordinary gesture of mateship, the remnants of the 47th Battalion reunited. Having been scattered to other units after their disbandment, the survivors gathered in Belgium for one last photo together. Only 73 remained.