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Book Sword and Baton Volume 1  1900 to 1939

Download or read book Sword and Baton Volume 1 1900 to 1939 written by Justin Chadwick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-05 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sword and Baton is a collection of 86 biographies representing every Australian Army officer to reach the rank of major general from Federation to the outbreak of World War II. This is the first of two volumes, and its scope is broad, including chaplains-general, surgeons-general and British Army officers who served with the AIF or the permanent forces. Author Justin Chadwick portrayal of these officers careers provides a lens through which he examines trends such as the development of military skills which ensured that, by the commencement of hostilities in 1914, Australia boasted a pool of well-trained, albeit inexperienced officers. The effects of command under pressure of war and the enormous physical impact of combat are likewise portrayed in these comprehensive biographies. By the end of hostilities Australian officers had garnered immense experience and were among the best in the Allied forces. Ironically, this hard-won skill base was to be all but lost in the interwar period. Sword and Baton offers its readers more than a series of biographies. Rather, it describes a crucial period in Australian military history through the lives of the extraordinary men at its head.

Book Scenario Designer s Handbook  2nd Ed

Download or read book Scenario Designer s Handbook 2nd Ed written by Michael Dorosh and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scenario Designer's Handbook (ISBN 978-0-9782646-8-0) is intended as a reference for those interested in designing historical scenarios for the Advanced Squad Leader game system. The book features 240 full-colour pages with a variety of information to assist in force and terrain selection, including company, battalion and divisional break-downs of the major armies that participated in the Second World War. Additional chapters deal with scenario lay-out, publishing, researching, walk-throughs of the design process and discussion regarding the various components of ASL scenarios. The 2nd Edition includes an improved layout, additional information on various forces (Chinese, Finns, etc.) and revised appendices with updated map and overlay listing. Note the "discount" price on Lulu is the actual list price - this will not change.

Book The Burning Blue

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jeremy A. Crang
  • Publisher : Faber & Faber
  • Release : 2010-07-15
  • ISBN : 0571271413
  • Pages : 320 pages

Download or read book The Burning Blue written by Jeremy A. Crang and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was, of course, the Battle of Britain, or rather its conclusion, that prompted one of Winston Churchill's most memorable pieces of oratory that has its epitome in the sentence, 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.' If the Battle of Britain had been lost it is very likely the New Order to which the Axis powers had pledged themselves would have become global with unthinkable consequences for the world afterwards. The importance of the Battle of Britain cannot be exaggerated though inevitably in the succeeding years the accretion of myth has brought about many distortions. This multi-faceted symposium emerged from the Centre of Second World War Studies at Edinburgh University with the aim, in the words of the editors, 'to reassess established themes while opening up new ones.' After a masterly introduction by Brian Bond, the book is divided into six parts: Before the Battle; The Battle; The View from Afar; Experience and Memory; The Making of a British Legend and The Significance. The contributors are: Klaus A. Maier; Malcolm Smith; Horst Boog; Sebastian Cox; Sergei Kudryshov; Richard P. Hallion; Theodore F. Cook; Hans-Ekkehard Bob; Wallace Cunningham; Nigel Rose; Owen Dudley Edwards; Angus Calder; Tony Aldgate; Adrian Gregory; Jeremy Lake and John Schofield; Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang and Richard Overy. No survey could be more wide-ranging or fascinating. First published in 2000 to mark the 60th anniversary, it is now being reissued in 2010 to mark the 70th anniversary. 'But it is terrific. It's not only an acknowledgement of the heroism of the fighter pilots (and all the ancillary crew), but a serious contribution to the historical record. Seventeen contributors write about the Battle from pretty much every conceivable angle; and Addison and Crang have chosen them well. . . This is not an automatically worshipful book; it poses questions about the morality of war, the existence of heroism, the reliability of memory. But it treats the subject honestly and with justice. And it tells us why we won: because, it would appear, it helps to come from a society that is sceptical of authority rather than in blind, unthinking terror of it.' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian ''This book is a first-class piece of work, stimulating, informative and concise.' Brian Holden Reid, Times Higher Education Supplement. 'This is a nugget of a book . . . it assembles, most readably, a range of authoritative and international views on the Battle, its history, and its significance.' Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Graydon, Royal United Services Institute 'This is a much told story, but the varied viewpoints of the 20 contributors to Burning Blue - ranging from a fascinating essay by Owen Dudley Edwards on the air war as reflected in children's literaturer to the memories of pilots who fought in it on both sides - give an impressive breadth and depth. And even though it strips away hindsight and refuses to burnish legends, what is left is still one of the most remarkable stories in the whole of British history. The British empire didn't last a thousand years, but the man was right: this truly was its finest hour.' David Robinson, The Scotsman

Book The Hard Slog

    Book Details:
  • Author : Karl James
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2012-04-05
  • ISBN : 1107017327
  • Pages : 335 pages

Download or read book The Hard Slog written by Karl James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major study since 1963 to examine the historic Australian military campaign of 1944-1945 at Bougainville in the South Pacific.

Book Australia s Forgotten Soldiers in the Empire  1939   1947

Download or read book Australia s Forgotten Soldiers in the Empire 1939 1947 written by Lee Rippon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Australia s War 1939 45

Download or read book Australia s War 1939 45 written by Joan Beaumont and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War was a dominant experience in Australian history. For the first time the country faced the threat of invasion. The economy and society were mobilised to an unprecedented degree, with 550 000 men and women, or one in twelve of a population of over 7 million, serving in the armed forces overseas. Social patterns and family life were disrupted. Politically, the war gave a new legitimacy to the Australian Labor Party which had been confined to the wilderness of the Opposition at the Federal level for most of the inter-war years. The powers of the Federal government increased and a new momentum for social reform was generated at the popular and governmental level. In the international sphere, the war fundamentally shook Australian confidence in the power on which it had relied for generations, Great Britain. It generated a sense of independence in Australian foreign policy and initiated a new, if halting and problematic, realignment towards the United States. In this accessible book Joan Beaumont, Kate Darian-Smith, David Lee, David Lowe, Marnie Haig-Muir, Roy Hay and David Walker consider the range of Australia's experience of this conflict. In a single volume they draw together the many aspects of the war and distil the current state of historical scholarship. Australia's War 1939-45 will be invaluable to tertiary students and of enormous interest to the reader concerned with the social, political and military history of Australia. A companion volume on the First World War is also available.

Book Australia s War with France

Download or read book Australia s War with France written by Richard James and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1941: Great Britain is fighting for its very existence. France has surrendered and installed Marshal Pétain, an ageing reactionary, as head of a hostile new government at Vichy. The Allied outpost in Egypt, and the Suez Canal—its strategic jewel—are threatened on both sizes. To the west, Rommel is rampaging through North Africa. To the east, the Germans are arming rebels and fostering an uprising in British Iraq. Churchill’s cabinet is reeling after disastrous campaign in Greece. There are fears of a German takeover in Vichy-controlled Syria and Lebanon, where a languishing French colonial army may fall in line with the Nazis. Churchill orders a disgruntled General Wavell to take the offensive, assuming that the French will not put up a fight against an Allied show of force. The only troops available are a division of Australians, the 7th: untested recruits, digging ditches in the Egyptian desert. This is the story of how the 7th Division came to fight against the Army of the Levant—Australia against France—in the rocky hills of Lebanon and the barren wastes of Syria. Contrary to Churchill’s expectations, the French resisted viciously. The Australians won the war, but at the price of more than 400 young men, sons of Anzacs who had fought to defend France in the trenches of the western Front. The British were embarrassed, the campaign was forgotten, and the Australians who fought were dubbed ‘the silent men.’ No contemporary Australian historian has studied the conflict. British and French accounts exist, but fail to do justice to the Australian contribution. Through interviews with the veterans, archival records, and on-the-ground research, this book seeks to understand a neglected campaign and give it a proper place in Australian history.

Book Shadows on the Track

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jan McLeod
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2019-01-05
  • ISBN : 1925675912
  • Pages : 339 pages

Download or read book Shadows on the Track written by Jan McLeod and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-01-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At Templeton’s Crossing in October 1942, Private Nick Kennedy paused to write in his diary: ‘One wonders why all this strife should be … these men in the prime of their life cut down like flowers’. As a young nursing orderly serving with the 2/4th Australian Field Ambulance, Kennedy was unenviably well-placed to reflect on the futility of war. The Australian Army was woefully unprepared to fight a medical war in Papua and the soldiers paid the price. Almost 30,000 soldiers suffered from illness and tropical diseases, and an estimated 6000 were killed or wounded during the six-month campaign. These statistics have traditionally been represented as unavoidable consequences of fighting a war in a place such as Papua. This book disputes that narrative. Death and disease were inevitable outcomes, but the scale of the suffering was not. The medical challenges presented in Papua were extreme – they were not insurmountable. Shadows on the Track considers a wide range of issues that impacted on the health of the Australian soldiers before, during and after the Papuan campaign was fought and won. The strengths, successes, shortcomings and failures of the medical campaign are identified, analysed and evaluated. The focus on the front-line medical personnel – the men of the field ambulance units – brings a new perspective to the battles of the Kokoda Track, Milne Bay and the Beachheads. Shining a light on these Australians who tended the sick, mended the wounded and buried the dead in Papua makes stepping out of the shadows a little easier.

Book Goodnight Bobbie

Download or read book Goodnight Bobbie written by Marilyn Dodkin and published by UNSW Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1941. Australia is at war and there are fears of an attack on the homeland. Captain Bobbie Puflett, a doctor serving with the 10th Australian General Hospital of the 8th Division in Malaya, writes to his parents Bob and Ethel and sister Del. When the Allies surrender to the Japanese in February 1942, Bobbie is one of 15,000 men of the 8th Division who disappear. It is eighteen months before his family knows that he is a prisoner of war, but they continue to write. This is one family’s story told through letters. We learn of everyday life in wartime Sydney and service in the allied forces before the fall of Singapore. Most of all the letters bring to life the pain of separation.

Book Citizens and Soldiers

Download or read book Citizens and Soldiers written by Eliot A. Cohen and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has the United States, unlike every other 20th-century world power, failed to settle on a durable system of military service? In this lucid book, Eliot Cohen studies the enduring problems of America's methods of raising an army.

Book MacArthur s Coalition

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter J. Dean
  • Publisher : University Press of Kansas
  • Release : 2018-04-03
  • ISBN : 0700626042
  • Pages : 494 pages

Download or read book MacArthur s Coalition written by Peter J. Dean and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1942–1945 the Allies’ war in the Southwest Pacific was effectively a bilateral coalition between the United States and Australia under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. By charting the evolution of the military effectiveness of the US-Australian alliance, MacArthur’s Coalition puts the relationship between the United States and Australia at the center of the war against Japan. Drawing on new primary source material, Peter J. Dean has written the first substantial book-length treatment of the coalition as a combined military force. This expansive and ambitious book provides a fresh perspective on the Pacific War by providing a close-up, in-depth account of operations in the Southwest Pacific from the Kokoda Trail campaign to the reconquest of the Philippines and Borneo. Dean’s work takes the reader deep into the key military headquarters in the Southwest Pacific and reveals the discussions, debates, and arguments between key commanders and staff officers during the course of planning and waging a monumental conflict. Drawing upon archival records across three continents, Dean brings the qualities of these senior officers to life by exploring the critical importance of personalities and leadership in overcoming cultural, doctrinal, and organizational divides in the largely unequal alliance. Set against the practicalities of fighting a fanatical enemy in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the war, his book shows how, despite these divides and MacArthur’s difficult personality, the US-Australian coalition was able to forge a highly effective and ultimately triumphant fighting machine. With its unprecedented view of the joint nature of operations in the Southwest Pacific and its focus on frontline commanders and units in forging a successful fighting force, MacArthur’s Coalition illuminates a critical aspect of the Allied victory in World War II.

Book Australian Dictionary of Biography  Volume 19

Download or read book Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 19 written by Melanie Nolan and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 970 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 19 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) contains concise biographies of individuals who died between 1991 and 1995. The first of two volumes for the 1990s, it presents a colourful montage of late twentieth-century Australian life, containing the biographies of significant and representative Australians. The volume is still in the shadow of World War II with servicemen and women who enlisted young appearing, but these influences are dimming and there are now increasing numbers of non-white, non-male, non-privileged and non-straight subjects. The 680 individuals recorded in volume 19 of the ADB include Wiradjuri midwife and Ngunnawal Elder Violet Bulger; Aboriginal rights activist, poet, playwright and artist Kevin Gilbert; and Torres Strait Islander community leader and land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo. HIV/AIDS child activists Tony Lovegrove and Eve Van Grafhorst have entries, as does conductor Stuart Challender, ‘the first Australian celebrity to go public’ about his HIV/AIDS condition in 1991. The arts are, as always, well-represented, including writers Frank Hardy, Mary Durack and Nene Gare, actors Frank Thring and Leonard Teale and arts patron Ian Potter. We are beginning to see the effects of the steep rise in postwar immigration flow through to the ADB. Artist Joseph Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski was born in Poland. Pilar Moreno de Otaegui, co-founded the Spanish Club of Sydney. Chinese restaurateur and community leader Ming Poon (Dick) Low migrated to Victoria in 1953. Often we have a dearth of information about the domestic lives of our subjects; politician Olive Zakharov, however, bravely disclosed at the Victorian launch of the federal government’s campaign to Stop Violence Against Women in 1993 that she was a survivor of domestic violence in her second marriage. Take a dip into the many fascinating lives of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Book A Soldier s Soldier

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jeffrey Grey
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2013-01-24
  • ISBN : 1107292484
  • Pages : 265 pages

Download or read book A Soldier s Soldier written by Jeffrey Grey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly was a renowned soldier and one of the most influential figures in Australia's military history. As Chief of the General Staff during the Vietnam War, he oversaw a significant re-organisation of the Army as he fought a war under political and resource restrictions. In this unique biography, Jeffrey Grey shows how Daly prepared himself for the challenges of command in a time of great political upheaval. A Soldier's Soldier examines Daly's career from his entry to Duntroon in the early 1930s until his retirement forty years later, covering the key issues in the development of the Australian Army along the way. Drawing on extensive interview transcripts, the book provides a compelling portrait of Sir Thomas Daly and his distinguished career.

Book El Alamein and the Struggle for North Africa

Download or read book El Alamein and the Struggle for North Africa written by Jill Edwards and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection of studies presents fresh insights into a war fought over unusually difficult terrain and with exceptional supply demands. From the ongoing Italian geomorphic study of the Alamein arena to individual memories of non-combatant Alexandrians, from the Free French to the seasoned colonial forces of Australia, India, New Zealand, and South Africa, and from vital naval engagements and the siege of Malta to the study of Rommel's leadership and the Churchill-Montgomery duo, this book presents the reader with a detailed yet broad reassessment of the complexities of the war in North Africa between 1941 and 1943, its technology, philosophy, military doctrine, strategy, tactics, logistics, and the associated local and international politics. Writing from the perspectives of some of the many nations whose armies were involved in the conflict, fifteen historians bring to their work the precision of their national historical archival sources in clear and spritely narratives.

Book Tobruk and El Alamein

Download or read book Tobruk and El Alamein written by Barton Maughan and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 857 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: