The Lost Battalions - A Battle That Could Not Be Won an Island That Could Not Be Defended. an Ally That Could Not Be Trusted by Tom Gilling

$32.99 AUD

Category: Military

They were thrown into a hopeless fight against an overwhelming enemy. Later, hundreds died as prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and in the freezing coal mines of Taiwan and Japan. Through it all, wrote Weary Dunlop, they showed 'fortitude beyond anything I could have believed possible'. Until n ow, the story of the 2000 diggers marooned on Java in February 1942 has been a footnote to the fall of Singapore and the bloody campaign in New Guinea. Led by an Adelaide lawyer, Brigadier Arthur Blackburn VC, and fighting with scrounged weapons, two Australian battalions - plus an assortment of cooks, laundrymen and deserters from Singapore - held up the might of the Imperial Japanese Army until ordered by their Dutch allies to surrender. Drawing on personal diaries, official records and interviews with two of the last living survivors, this book tells the extraordinary story of the 'lads from Java', who laid down their weapons, but refused to give in. ...Show more

Nameless Names The by Scott Bennett

$49.99 AUD

Category: Military

Few Australians realise that of the 62,000 anzac soldiers who died in the great war, over one-third are still listed as 'missing'. With no marked graves, the only reminders of their sacrifice are the many names inscribed on ageing war memorials around the world. Bennett deftly tells the story of such m issing Anzacs through the personal experience of three sets of brothers -- the Reids, Pflaums, and Allens -- whose names he selected from the Memorials to the Missing. Bennett traces their paths from small, peaceful towns to three devastating battlefields of the Great War: Gallipoli, Fromelles, and Ypres. He reveals the carnage that led to their disappearance, and their family's subsequent grief and endless search for elusive facts. Bennett's unflinching account addresses many painful questions. What circumstances resulted in the disappearance of so many soldiers? Why did the Australian government fail in its solemn pledge to recover the missing? Why were so many families left without answers about the fate of their loved ones -- despite the dedicated efforts of Vera Deakin and her co-workers at the Australian Red Cross inquiry bureau, first in Cairo and then in London? Vera, a daughter of Australia's second prime minister, had had a privileged upbringing, and yet devoted herself tirelessly to seeking answers for the families of the missing. The Nameless Nameslays bare the emotional toll inflicted upon families, describing those caught between clinging to hope and letting go, those who felt compelled to journey to distant battlefields for answers, and those who shunned conventional religion and resorted to spiritualism for solace. This moving book delicately reveals the human faces and the devastating stories behind the names listed on the stone memorials. ...Show more

The Stolen Maps by TREVOR TUCKER

$29.95 AUD

Category: Military

Kangaroo Squadron: American Courage in the Darkest Days of World War II

$27.99 AUD

Category: Military

In early 1942, while most of the American military was still in disarray from the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, a single squadron advanced to the far side of the world to face America's new enemy. Based in Australia with poor supplies and no ground support, the pilots and c rew faced tropical diseases while confronting numerically superior Japanese forces. Yet the outfit, dubbed the Kangaroo Squadron, proved remarkably resilient and successful, conducting long-range bombing raids, armed reconnaissance missions, and rescuing General MacArthur and his staff from the Philippines. Before now, the story of their courage and determination in the face of overwhelming odds has largely been untold. Using eyewitness accounts based on personal diaries, letters, new interviews, and memoirs as well as Japanese sources, historian Bruce Gamble brings to vivid life this dramatic true story. But the Kangaroo Squadron's story doesn't end in World War II. One of the B-17s, crash landed on its first mission, has recently been recovered from jungle swamps. The intertwined stories of the Kangaroo Squadron and the "Swamp Ghost" are filled with thrilling accounts of aerial combat, an epic jungle survival story, and the powerful mystique of an abandoned bomber that compelled men to possess it at any cost. ...Show more

1918 How the First World War was Won by JULIAN THOMPSON

$35.00 AUD

Category: Military

The war in 1918 changed character radically, and nowhere more so than on the Western Front. Over three years of stalemate, what had effectively become siege warfare conducted along a line of trenches from Switzerland to the sea was 'unlocked' by the German March 1918 offensive. Suddenly it was a war of movement again for the first time since November 1914. After some desperate fighting the Allies stemmed the tide of the German advance, and began the counter-offensive. 1918: How the First World War Was Won gives the detailed account of the final year of the First World War. Every battle is examined and retold from a new, refreshing perspective - it wasn't just the British forces on the final push - they were accompanied by new American troops, Canadian reinforcements, and masterminded by the tactical command of French General Ferdinand Foch. This new, incredibly illustrated book tells the story of those final violent pushes to the end of the war in 1918, and is a must for any interested in the subject. ...Show more

The Mighty Krait by Ian McPhedran

$35.00 AUD

Category: Military

Over many years, thousands of people have walked past a modest black timber fishing boat bobbing in the waters of Sydney's Darling Harbour, paying it little attention. But appearances can be deceptive.The humble little Japanese-built trawler called the Krait played a crucial role in one of World War II' s most audacious and successful Allied commando raids. In 1943, she carried 14 operatives from the top-secret 'Z' Special Unit from Australia to Japanese-occupied Singapore and back again. Battling deadly tides, fierce storms, hostile ships and detection from the air, this small vessel and its courageous crew made it to the heart of the enemy stronghold to conduct a daring raid that destroyed 26,000 tonnes of enemy shipping. Operation Jaywick was one of the greatest Special Forces operations of all time.But the story doesn't end there. After the war, the Krait was used by smugglers and then as a work boat before it was discovered, purchased by veterans and eventually handed to the Australian War Memorial. A mighty and concerted effort by a dedicated few has saved and restored the little boat with a big past. Now the battle is on to preserve and display it at the Australian National Maritime Museum, as a permanent memorial to our Special Forces.The Mighty Krait is a compelling, uplifting and unforgettable story of Australian military history - and a solemn reminder of the courage and sacrifice of our armed forces against incredible odds. ...Show more

Anzac Sniper: the Untold Story of One of Australia's Greatest Soldiers by Roland Perry

$32.99 AUD

Category: Military

For Valour - Australians Awarded the Victoria Cross by Aaron Pegram; Craig Blanch

$79.99 AUD

Category: Military

For Valour tells the remarkable stories of the 100 Australians who have been awarded the Victoria Cross for exceptional acts of bravery and self-sacrifice in battle. From Captain Neville Howse of the New South Wales Army Medical Corps in 1900 to Corporal Cameron Baird of the 2nd Commando Regiment in 201 3, heroic actions in the Boer War appear alongside those from the First World War, North Russia, the Second World War, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Vivid descriptions of events on the battlefield are matched with biographical profiles of each of the recipients to provide insights into their lives outside wartime service.With a foreword from Daniel Keighran VC, new archival research and striking photographs and artworks from the Australian War Memorial, For Valour commemorates the servicemen who have been awarded the military's highest honour. ...Show more

D-Day: The Soldiers' Story by Giles Milton

$35.00 AUD

Category: Military

'Compellingly authentic, revelatory and beautifully written. A gripping tour de force' Damien Lewis Almost seventy-five years have passed since D-Day, the day of the greatest seaborne invasion in history. The outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance on that chill June morning. If Allied forc es succeeded in gaining a foothold in northern France, the road to victory would be open. But if the Allies could be driven back into the sea, the invasion would be stalled for years, perhaps forever. An epic battle that involved 156,000 men, 7,000 ships and 20,000 armoured vehicles, the desperate struggle that unfolded on 6 June 1944 was, above all, a story of individual heroics - of men who were driven to keep fighting until the German defences were smashed and the precarious beachheads secured. Their authentic human story - Allied, German, French - has never fully been told. Giles Milton's bold new history narrates the day's events through the tales of survivors from all sides: the teenage Allied conscript, the crack German defender, the French resistance fighter. From the military architects at Supreme Headquarters to the young schoolboy in the Wehrmacht's bunkers, D-Day: The Soldiers' Story lays bare the absolute terror of those trapped in the frontline of Operation Overlord. It also gives voice to those hitherto unheard - the French butcher's daughter, the Panzer Commander's wife, the chauffeur to the General Staff. This vast canvas of human bravado reveals 'the longest day' as never before - less as a masterpiece of strategic planning than a day on which thousands of scared young men found themselves staring death in the face. It is drawn in its entirety from the raw, unvarnished experiences of those who were there. ...Show more

Monash and Chauvel by Roland Perry

$34.99 AUD

Category: Military

Monash and Chauvel is a gripping narrative history that follows the extraordinary campaigns of the two most outstanding battlefield commanders of the First World War across all the Allied armies: John Monash and Harry Chauvel.Monash commanded the Australian forces on the Western Front at the most critic al time of the war, 1918. In the war against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, Chauvel led the 34,000-strong Desert Mounted Column.By the end of the war Monash and Chauvel had brought a distinctly Australian sensibility to their areas of operation, involving flexibility, innovation and a deep respect for the troops they led, which was in turn reciprocated by their men. Their impact on the war was immense and, in this fascinating and compelling account, bestselling author Roland Perry does full justice to their extraordinary careers and the soldiers under their command. ...Show more

Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Occupied Europe by Gordon Corera

$32.99 AUD

Category: Military

A riveting spy story set in World War Two. Using declassified documents and extensive original research, Secret Pigeon Service tells the dramatic untold story of MI 14(d) and its spy networks including the remarkable `Leopold Vindictive', a Belgian resistance cell who used the pigeon they found in 1941 to spy on the Nazis. Everyone has heard of MI5 and MI6. Some may even have heard of MI9 which helped downed airmen escape in World War II. But few will know of MI14(d) - the `Special Pigeon Service,' where Operation Columba was conceived. Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky pigeons were dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to Copenhagen as part of `Columba' - a secret British operation to bring back intelligence from those living under Nazi occupation. The messages flooded back attached to the pigeons - authentic voices from rural France, Holland, Belgium - sometimes comic, often tragic and some invaluable with details of German troop movements and fortifications. At the centre of this dramatic new book by BBC Security Correspondent Gordon Corera is the `Leopold Vindictive' ring - a small group of Belgian villagers prepared to take huge risks to resist and how they were led by a priest for whom it was as if every step of his extraordinary life up to July 1941 had prepared him for his role as leader of this unlikely spy network. A powerful and tragic tale of wartime espionage, the book brings together for the first time the British and Belgian sides of the Leopold Vindictive story and reveals the wider history of a quirky, quarellsome band of spymasters and their special wartime operations. It is a book not just about pigeons but about the ordinary people who were faced with the choice of how to respond to a call for help, and took the decision to resist. ...Show more

Stern Justice: The Forgotten Story of Australia, Japan and the Pacific War Crimes Trials by Adam Wakeling

$34.99 AUD

Category: Military

'For the first time Australia speaks, not for herself alone, but for the whole British Commonwealth.' So wrote a journalist about the Tokyo trials of the Japanese military for war crimes. Australia played a key role in these trials, and in others held elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific, including Manus Islan d. The most tenacious of the Allied prosecutors, Australia was the last country to conduct war crimes trials against the Japanese. The aim was to prevent a repetition of the horrors of the Pacific War, in which the number of Allied POWs who died in Japanese captivity was many times greater than those who died in German and Italian captivity. Yet debate around the trials was fierce at the time - about the legal basis for them, about whether Emperor Hirohito should have also been charged, and whether Allied soldiers should have been. And not least, about where the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities sat on the scale of wartime atrocities. Seventy years on, much remains to be learnt from both the successes and failures of these trials. Were they fair? Were their goals realistic? Were they acts of justice or revenge? With international law more important today than ever, Stern Justice makes an irrefutable case for not allowing them to stay forgotten. ...Show more