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Showing 2421 - 2438 of 2438 items
By Jean Scott. 1995
The author was a Land Army girl. In this account of the AWLA, she and other 'girls' describe their World…
War II experiences on the land, as farmers, replacing the men at war. What endures is a feeling of fulfilment, friendships, and a moving untold story.By Scott Bennett. 2011
In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture…
a small village called Pozières, perched on the highest ridge of the battlefield. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task.At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed and took Pozières. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren, lunar landscape. Despite the toll, the capture of Pozières was heralded as a stunning tactical victory. Yet for the exhausted survivors, the war-weary public, and the families of the dead and maimed, victory came at such terrible cost it seemed indistinguishable from defeat.This account tells the stories of those men who fought at Pozières. Drawing on their letters and diaries, it reveals a battlefield drenched in chaos, suffering, and fear. Bennett sheds light on the story behind the official history, showing how commanders struggled with a war conducted on an unprecedented scale and how the survivors witnessed appalling human tragedy to return home as heroes but, too often, shattered men.By Gabrielle Chan. 2004
As the clock struck twelve to signal the start of 1942, Australians did not give the New Year their traditional…
noisy welcome. Regular events were cancelled, nightclub bookings were down and most people stayed in their blacked out homes. Clocks were put forward an hour for the start of daylight saving, as part of a war-time scheme to save power. All around the Pacific, Japan was making gains. They already occupied most of China; bombed Pearl Harbour, Guam and Wake; sunk the stars of the British naval fleet, the Prince of Wales and Repulse. They had landed in British Borneo, Hong Kong and the Philippines. This is the story of 1942, as told in first-hand accounts by the men and women in Australia and around the world.The facts are shocking. The treachery is chilling. The fallout ongoing. During the 1950s-60s, with the blessing of Prime Minister…
Robert Menzies, the British government used Australia as its nuclear laboratory. They exploded twelve atomic bombs on Australian soil - at the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga. Sixteen thousand Australian servicemen were guinea pigs. RAAF pilots were ordered to fly into nuclear mushroom clouds, soldiers told to walk into radioactive ground zero, sailors retrieved highly contaminated debris - none of them aware of the dangers they faced. But the betrayal didn't end with our soldiers. Secret monitoring stations were set up around the continent to measure radiation levels and a clandestine decades-long project stole bones from dead babies to see how much fallout had contaminated their small bodies - their grieving parents were never told. Investigative journalist Frank Walker's Maralinga is a must-read true story of scientists treating an entire population as lab rats and politicians sacrificing their own people in the pursuit of power.By Mark Aarons. 1989
The passing of the Australian War Crimes Legislation 1988 came at a time when many thought that World War II…
should be forgotten. This book looks at why it has taken so long for this process to be activated and at war crimes cases in Australia.By Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal, Nathan K Burstein. 2015
This book is an episodic treatment of the greatest missions of the Israeli Special Forces, characterized by its lead piece,…
an intriguing story of the rescue of 200 hijacked airline passengers at Entebbe, Uganda. This book is something of a sequel to Bar-Zohar's previous work, Mossad which investigated the world's most enigmatic intelligence service. It depicts major battles, raids in enemy territory, and death-defying commando missions; it shares the personal stories of simple soldiers and top commanders, and reveals the fears and hopes of young Israeli recruits.By Robert Mason. 1983
This straight-from-the-shoulder account tells the truth about the helicopter war in Vietnam, and a personal story of men under fire.…
Robert Mason, a veteran of more than one thousand combat missions, gives descriptions that cut to the heart of the combat experience: the fear and belligerence, the quiet insights and raging madness, the lasting friendships and sudden death -- the extreme emotions of a "chickenhawk" in constant danger.By Mark Urban. 2011
When British and American forces invaded Iraq in April 2003, their intelligence operations got to work looking for the WMD…
their governments had promised us were there. They quickly realised no such weapons existed. Instead they become faced with an ever-increasing spiral of extremism and violence that was almost impossible to understand, let alone contain. This book tells the story of what happened next, one of the most dramatic and sustained operations in recent military history.By Robyn J Kienzle. 2011
The Kokoda story continues to have a very powerful resonance with all Australians, and Bert Kienzle's vital role is acknowledged…
in all the published accounts but until now no one has ever told his story. If one person 'made' the Kokoda Track, that man was Bert Kienzle. Part Samoan and German/English, born in Fiji and raised in Germany and Australia, he was managing a rubber plantation and gold mine in New Guinea at the outbreak of World War II. He surveyed and established the Track, and spent more time on it than anyone else throughout the campaign managing and organising the delivery of supplies and men along it. This is a unique account of a very special part of our history, told by his daughter-in-law with unique access to the central character, and access to all his records and photos. This is the untold story of a true Australian war hero.By John Murphy. 1993
This book looks at Australia's experience of the Vietnam War. It covers: social and political life in colonial and postcolonial…
Vietnam; Australian Cold War politics and the diplomacy that led us to Vietnam; and the impact of the Australian anti-war movement.By Michael Sexton. 2002
In 1965 Australia invited itself to a war. For many years it was widely accepted that American political pressure was…
the reason for Australia's entry into the Vietnam War. However top secret documents from the period indicate that: Australia had volunteered the use of combat troops some time before the decision was announced in April, 1965; Australia urged America to escalate the war by bombing North Vietnam; Australia was totally indifferent to the views of the Government in South Vietnam that it was supposed to be defending. All this occurred in a political climate so ruthlessly manipulated by the Menzies government that these decisions could be made without any prior debate in the Parliament or in the press. War for the Asking goes behind the scenes of the high-level meetings of politicians and diplomats in Canberra and Washington, demolishing the myths that have grown up around Australia's military deployment during the Vietnam years. It is a story that will still shock many Australians...and it raises questions that remain relevant to Australia's role in world affairs in a new century.By Alison Broinowski. 2003
Why did John Howard lead Australia into a highly unpopular war with Iraq? The war cost us more than $700…
million but, Broinowski argues, it has made Iraq and its neighbours more unstable, and hasn’t delivered any of the results our leaders promised: replacing Saddam Hussein with a democratic regime, finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or combating terrorism. And was the war have in our interests if it has made Australia a target for further terrorism, put us at odds with our Asian neighbours, and fractured the United Nations?By Raimond Gaita. 2003
The war in Iraq is over, so we are told, but huge questions remain unanswered. Why were we lied to…
about the existence of weapons of mass destruction? Why do we still not know how many Iraqis died in the invasion? Why was John Howard so eager to commit Australian troops? Was the invasion legal under international law? And how can we reconcile this critical questioning with the knowledge of how Iraqis suffered under Saddam Hussein? In Why the War Was Wrong, leading Australian writers give their answers. Arguing from legal, political, historical, philosophical and humanitarian standpoints, they aim to make a passionate case for the primacy of our responsibilities to our fellow human beings. With contributions by Robert Manne, Guy Rundle, Eva Sallis, Raimond Gaita, Hilary Charlesworth, Peter Coghlan, and Mark McKenna.By Ronin Gerster, Peter Pierce. 2004
This important anthology reveals the many ways in which going to war has formed a cultural bridge between Australia and…
the world. From the Sudan in 1885 to Afghanistan in 2001, the connection of war to travel is illustrated in the observations of writers as varied as 'Banjo' Paterson, George Johnston, Nancy Wake, John Pilger, Lily Brett and Peter Weir. Selecting writings from combatants abroad as well as the reflections of sightseers who travel to foreign battlefields and war sites, Robin Gerster and Peter Pierce reveal how the experience of war has both broadened and refined (and sometimes distorted) Australian views of the world. The collection crosses the boundaries between literature, literary criticism, travel writing, war writing and cultural commentary.By Sue Ebury. 1994
Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop is known for looking after the men under his command during their time as prisoners of…
war. However, many would not know about his involvement in the Colombo Plan, his pioneering period in cancer surgery, and his time as a young and brilliant student who also represented Australia in rugby.By Derek Robinson. 1987
Posted to France in 1916, eighteen year old Lieutenant Oliver Paxton is idealistic and eager to win the war. Though…
he feels surrounded by loafers and drunks, he enjoys being a Flying Corps gunner. Most of all he looks forward to the battle of the Somme, never dreaming what a bloodbath it would become.Dr Munjed Al Muderis grew up in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign. He went to school with Saddam's sons, then…
started his medical training at Basra University just as the Iran. Iraq War began. One day, as he was working as a trainee surgeon at the Saddam Hussein Medical Centre, he and his colleagues were ordered to remove the tops of the ears of army deserters. He could not bring himself to act in defiance of the medical code of conduct and cause intentional harm, so he had no choice but to flee Baghdad that same day. In Kuala Lumpur he paid people smugglers to get him to Australia, where he was incarcerated in a detention centre and known only as '982'. After nine months of being repeatedly brutalised for standing up for himself and other detainees, Munjed was finally freed. But he had to start his medical training again, from scratch. Now, 15 years later, Munjed is at the forefront of orthopaedic medicine as he pioneers a new form of prosthesis that, ironically, transforms the lives of soldiers mutilated in the Iraq War. 'Walking Free' is the extraordinary story of a clever young man, born into one of Iraq's ruling families, who was forced to flee the country of his birth and forge a new and extraordinary life in Australia.By Leslie Poidevin. 1985