This book is a collection of short stories, diary extracts, letters, anecdotes and quotes from past and present serving soldiers. From WW1 to modern day conflicts, this book is an up close and personal perspective of what the soldier regards as his core values. These include compassion, mateship, courage, initiative, loyalty, integrity and trust. Aussie Soldier includes a 30-page battle book that summarises some of Australia's most famous battles.
Winner of the 2022 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-fiction. Shortlisted for NSW Premier's Literary Award's Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction. Longlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award. Rogue Forces is the explosive first insiders’ story of how some of Australia’s revered SAS soldiers crossed the line in Afghanistan, descending from elite warriors to unlawful killers. Mark Willacy, who won a Gold Walkley for exposing SAS war crimes, has penetrated the SAS code of silence to reveal one of the darkest chapters in our country’s military history. Willacy’s devastating award-winning Four Corners program, ‘Killing Fields’ captured on film for the first time a war crime perpetrated by an Australian: the killing of a terrified, unarmed Afghan man in a field by an SAS soldier. It caused shockwaves around the world and resulted in an Australian Federal Police war crimes investigation. It also sparked a new line of investigation by the Brereton inquiry, the independent Australian Defence Force inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan. It was a game changer. But for Willacy, it was just the beginning of a much bigger story. More SAS soldiers came forward with undeniable evidence and eyewitness testimony of other unlawful killings, and exposed a culture of brutality and impunity. Rogue Forces takes you out on the patrols where the killings happened. The result is a gripping character-driven story that embeds you on the front line in the thick of the action as those soldiers share for the first time what they witnessed. Willacy also confronts those accused about their sides of the story. At its heart, Rogue Forces is a story about the true heroes who had the courage to come forward and expose the truth. This is their story. A story that had to be told. '[T]his brilliant and courageous book should be required reading for anyone seeking to paint our most recent military adventure as morally unambiguous. As Willacy shows, the “moral injury” sustained by many veterans was often a case of friendly fire.’ The Australian
‘A century ago we got it wrong. We sent thousands of young Australians on a military operation that was barely more than a disaster. It’s right that a hundred years later we should feel strongly about that. But have we got our remembrance right? What lessons haven’t we learned about war, and what might be the cost of our Anzac obsession?’ Defence analyst and former army officer James Brown believes that Australia is expending too much time, money and emotion on the Anzac legend, and that today’s soldiers are suffering for it. Vividly evoking the war in Afghanistan, Brown reveals the experience of the modern soldier. He looks closely at the companies and clubs that trade on the Anzac story. He shows that Australians spend a lot more time looking after dead warriors than those who are alive. We focus on a cult of remembrance, instead of understanding a new world of soldiering and strategy. And we make it impossible to criticise the Australian Defence Force, even when it makes the same mistakes over and over. None of this is good for our soldiers or our ability to deal with a changing world. With respect and passion, Brown shines a new light on Anzac’s long shadow and calls for change. "Bold, original, challenging - James Brown tackles the burgenoning Anzac industry and asks Australians to re-examine how we think about the military and modern-day service." - Leigh Sales "The best book yet written, not just on Australia's Afghan war, but on war itself and the creator/destroyer myth of Anzac." - John Birmingham James Brown is a former Australian Army officer, who commanded a cavalry troop in Southern Iraq, served on the Australian taskforce headquarters in Baghdad, and was attached to Special Forces in Afghanistan. Today he is the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy where he works on strategic military issues and defence policy. He also chairs the NSW Government’s Contemporary Veterans Forum. He lives in Sydney.
The importance of the Australian contribution to the Allied war effort during World War I should never be underestimated. Some 400,000 Australians volunteered for active duty, an astonishing 13 per cent of the entire (white) male population, a number so great that the Australian government was never forced to rely on conscription. Casualties were an astonishing 52 per cent of all those who served, ensuring that the effects of the war would be felt long after the armistice. In particular, their epic endeavour at Gallipoli in 1915 was the nation's founding legend, and the ANZACs went on to distinguish themselves both on the Western Front and in General Allenby's great cavalry campaign against the Turks in the Middle East. Their uniforms and insignia were also significantly different from those of the British Army and provide the basis for a unique set of artwork plates.
This riveting book follows a small group of Australian front-line soldiers from their enlistment in the dark days of 1940 to the end of World War II. No ordinary soldiers, they were members of Don Company of the Second 43rd Battalion, part of the famous 9th Australian Division, which sustained more casualties and won more medals than any other Australian division. Inspired by American historian Stephen Ambrose's landmark book, Band of Brothers, about the US Army's Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, Mark Johnston, one of our best military historians, here gives an Australian company the same treatment. His book is a unique and powerful account of the everyday experiences of a small unit of Australian soldiers on the front line.
Nearly 1 million American soldiers passed through Australia between 1942 and 1945 as part of America's strategy to re-capture the Philippines and defeat Japan.They encountered a country full of reassuring similarities and strange differences. Here was a land of wide-open spaces, roughly the same size as the US, with a can-do, pioneering spirit, a history of swift development; a land of 'funny animals' and peculiar vowel sounds. But who were the Australians and how were Americans to behave in their midst? They were, of course, 'an outdoors sort of people, breezy and very democratic', with a gargantuan appetite for swearing.In the inimitable prose of the soldier's pocket book series, this pithy guide captures the essence of Australia and its people, their humour, vocabulary; their attitude to the Yanks, the British, the War and the world with remarkable economy and clarity. It also manages to squeeze in a précis of Australian history, politics, economics, sports, and musical tradition, as well as colourful lexicon of national slang, which defines for example sheila as 'a babe', cliner as 'another babe', and sninny as 'a third babe'. Like any self-respecting guide to Australian culture, it contains the text of Waltzing Matilda, together with a few bon mots about its cultural significance, particularly in wartime.Unlike cricket, which is a polite game, Australian Rules Football creates a desire on the part of the crowd to tear someone apart, usually the referee.The Australian has few equals in the world at swearing ...the commonest swear words are bastard (pronounced "barstud"), "bugger," and "bloody," and the Australians have a genius for using the latter nearly every other word.
Established in 1911, The Rotarian is the official magazine of Rotary International and is circulated worldwide. Each issue contains feature articles, columns, and departments about, or of interest to, Rotarians. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners and 19 Pulitzer Prize winners – from Mahatma Ghandi to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – have written for the magazine.
Soldier presents a magnificent collection of highly detailed illustrations depicting uniforms worn by the military forces of this nation from colonial times to the modern era. Accompanying each illustration is the history of the uniform and equipment portrayed and the men and women who wore the uniform and the circumstances of their service. This is a book rich in colour and historical narrative. Soldier is much more than simply a description of military uniforms and equipment. Phil Rutherford has spent over 20 years searching for the roots of Australia’s modern army, analysing trends both in dress and in the military art itself. In doing so he has discovered that there is very little about the uniforms worn and the equipment carried by today’s soldiers that can truly be called its own. Even the most iconic symbol of the Australian army, the slouch hat, was not invented by a Victorian volunteer as popular rumour suggests, but was worn by troops in seventeenth-century Europe. In fact, there are significant elements of the army’s dress and equipment, such as the badges of rank worn by both soldiers and officers, which can be traced to the days of knights in shining armour. Soldier seeks to map the links between the army’s modern dress and its earliest antecedents, describing the formation and history of Australia’s army, from the perspective of both the regular and reserve soldiers. This book also reveals the story behind the soldiers themselves — the men and women who wore these uniforms — and the times in which they served since the first volunteers and militias were raised to protect the lives and property of the earliest settlers from adversaries both real and imagined.
'If I'd have been a Vietcong you'd be dead.' - Len Opie 'Len was a soldier above soldiers.' - Keith Payne VC Through three wars across 30 years, Len Opie carved a reputation as one of the country's greatest infantrymen. A cold-eyed killer who drank nothing stronger than weak tea, he fought with his bare hands, a sharpened shovel and piano wire. He was a larrikin who went by the book, unless the book was wrong. He set his own bar high and expected others to do the same. Stone Cold is the extraordinary story of one of Australia's most fearless fighters. It takes us into the jungles of New Guinea and Borneo and some of the fiercest battles of World War II. It goes to the cold heart of Korea, where Len emerged from the ranks to excel in the epic Battle of Kapyong and play a key role at the Battle of Maryang San. And it drops us into the centre of the American counterinsurgency war in Vietnam with Len's involvement in the CIA's shadowy black ops program, Phoenix. Action-packed and surprising, Stone Cold gives rich life to a warrior soldier and one of Australia's greatest diggers.
