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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
Many Chinese Australians proudly enlisted and fought in WWII. They served truly and their stories of service, told here, reveal their patriotic determination and instances of outstanding courage. Some were to sacrifice their lives for their country.
The Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 is a military disaster of enduring fascination. For the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the island, Peter Thompson tells the explosive story of the Malayan campaign, the siege of Singapore, the ignominious surrender to a much smaller Japanese force, and the Japanese occupation through the eyes of those who were there - the soldiers of all nationalities and members of Singapore's beleaguered population. An enthralling and perceptive account, which never loses sight of the human cost of the tragedy - Yorkshire Evening Post. An insightful and dramatic analysis - The Good Book Guide
Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories." In 1943 it became known under the cover name Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) and included some British officers who had escaped from Singapore. After arriving in Australia, they assembled in Melbourne, forming the nucleus of ISD and together with some Australians established what became the Z Special Unit. Training began in a number of locations around Australia including on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, In Broken Bay near Sydney, at Careening Bay in Western Australia, at the “House on the Hill” in Cairns and at East Arm near Darwin. From these training areas and bases, Z Special undertook intelligence gathering and raiding missions throughout Southeast Asia including New Guinea, Singapore, Timor, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies. The first operation was Jaywick in September 1943. Led by a 28 year old officer from the Gordon Highlanders, Captain Ivan Lyon. Using an old Japanese fishing boat renamed Krait this captured vessel was re-fitted and provisioned for a voyage from Australia to just south of Singapore where it released six commandos in three folding kayaks to attack Japanese shipping in the harbour. They placed limpet mines on several Japanese ships sinking 40,000 tons of shipping. After the successful attack, they paddled south, were picked up by the Krait and successfully returned to Australia. This was followed by Operation Rimau again led by Lyon but this time things went very wrong very early. Identified, they made a fighting withdrawal but all of the raiding party were shot or captured, with the last ten being executed just before the end of the war. Important in Z Special operations were a number of vessels designated “snake boats”. Four 66’ modified trawlers were constructed as well as a range of Asian vessels that allowed their operation in South East Asian areas of operation. One Z Special, the last in PNG, set out on the night of the 11 April 1945. Eight operatives were landed on the Japanese held island of Muschu about five kilometres off the coast near Wewak to determine the status of two 140mm Japanese naval guns that had been placed there. These guns would prove dangerous to planned naval landings at Wewak, and allied command needed to know if these were operational. The operatives were launched in four double folding kayaks from a HTML fast crash boat but the current carried them away from their landing position and the surf capsized their boats. The men swam ashore but both their radio and their signal torches had been destroyed and the men had no way of connecting with the return crash boat. Soon their lost equipment was found by the Japanese and a massive search with 1,000 troops scoured the island. Quite soon seven of the eight men had been captured, killed or died trying to swim to the mainland and only one man, Sergeant ‘Mick’ Dennis remained. Over the next three days he continued a one man war, fighting off Japanese patrols and living off the land. Unable to do this for long, he took to the dangerous shark and crocodile infested waters and with the aid of a log, paddled to the mainland. Landing on a Japanese controlled beach, he snuck ashore and after further firefights and a difficult journey travelling west, he finally was found by an Australian patrol. Mick Dennis was able to provide valuable information and for his service and bravery, was awarded a Military Medal. During the course of the war, Z Special Unit carried out 81 covert operations in the Southwest Pacific theatre. While the unit was disbanded after the end of the war, many of its techniques would be modified and used by Australian Special Forces to this day.
This book recounts the organization and deployment of one of the most important fighting armies of World War II. Australian divisions made a large and distinctive contribution to victory both in the deserts of the Middle East and the jungles of the South-West Pacific,earning for the second time a unique reputation for aggressiveness, endurance and independence of spirit. The text is illustrated with original wartime photos from all fronts; and with full colour plates showing a wide range of uniforms and gear, together with the complex and colourful Australian system of unit insignia.
