Page 48 - Australian Defence Magazine September 2018

BOOKS OF INTEREST
AN AUSTRALIAN BAND OF BROTHERS
DON COMPANY, SECOND 43RD BATTALION, 9TH DIVISION
By Mark Johnston Published by New South RRP $34.99 in Paperback | ISBN 9781742235721
The idea for this book
came after historian Mark Johnston advertised his interest in borrowing letters, diaries and memoirs from Australian soldiers who had served in WWII. Three of
the first replies he received were members of the 2/43 Battalion. Each of these
SERVING OUR COUNTRY
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS, WAR, DEFENCE AND CITIZENSHIP Edited by Joan Beaumont and Allison Cadzow Published by New South RRP $39.99 in paperback ISBN 9781742235394
After decades of silence, Serving Our Country is the first comprehensive history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s participation in the Australian defence forces. For over a century they defied racist restrictions and were denied
men – Gordon Combe, Allan Jones and John Lovegrove – had written fascinating and unusually detailed accounts of their war experiences.
His choice of the 2/43 was entirely appropriate given that they had participated in the campaigns in Tobruk, El Alamein, New Guinea and Borneo and in the process had sustained more casualties and won more medals than any other Australian division. Johnston’s access to
the detailed personal accounts offers the
reader an unprecedented insight into the daily
lives of these soldiers. I particularly enjoyed Allan Jones’s comparison of Australians versus their American counterparts; “the Americans were better fed, clothed, equipped and paid” but lacked the Australians’ “more realistic appreciation of common sense”.
full citizenship rights on
their return to civilian life.
THE BERLIN AIRLIFT
THE RELIEF OPERATION THAT DEFINED THE COLD WAR
By Barry Turner
Published by Icon Books; Dist. by Allen & Unwin RRP $39.99 in hardcover ISBN 9781785782404
Quite simply, one of the most critical moments in the Cold War, the Berlin airlift was the occasion when the Allies resolved to push back against Stalin’s aggression. Stalin was determined to force the Allies out and
take control of the city. To do this, he blocked all road
access into Berlin, leaving the Allies with only three narrow air corridors linking the city with the West. The city of Berlin was being starved into submission. However, in a daring and pugnacious move from June 1948 to May 1949, British and American aircraft carried out the most ambitious airborne relief operation ever mounted, flying 2.3 million tons of supplies on 277,500 flights to save the beleaguered city. In this meticulously researched book, Turner reveals the enormity of
this dangerous logistical exercise which eventually forced the Russians back
to the negotiating table. Turner’s book benefits from his access to previously unavailable archival material from American, British and German sources. It reveals how close the world came to another global conflict.
Their story is largely forgotten, overshadowed by the heroic deeds of the Anzacs at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. Like many POWs of WWII,
the surviving men were treated with indifference on their return to Australia. Their personal stories
of captivity reveal the difficulties faced in camp as a result of the “cultural differences regarding
food, accommodation, transportation, health care, work and punishment”. The men came to rely on food parcels from the Australian Red Cross, particularly as the economically troubled Ottoman empire became further stretched. Based on her PhD thesis for which she won the Army History Unit’s C E W Bean prize, Ariotti gives us the first full account of the experience of these forgotten Australians.
48 | September 2018 | www.australiandefence.com.au
Kate Ariotti is a historian of war and society and a lecturer in Australian history at the University of
CAPTIVE
ANZACS
During the First World War, 198 Australians became prisoners of the Ottomans. Captivity caused these men to question their position as soldiers and their role in the war, while living under the rule of a culturally, religiously and linguistically different enemy also proved challenging.
Overshadowed by the grief and hardship that characterised the post-war period, and by the enduring myth of the fighting Anzac, these POWs have long been neglected in the national memory of the war. Captive Anzacs explores how the prisoners felt about their capture and how they dealt with the physical and psychological strain of imprisonment, as well as the legacy of their time as POWs. More broadly, it explores public perceptions of the prisoners, the effects of their captivity on their families, and how military, government and charitable organisations responded to the POWs both during and after the war. Intertwining rich detail from letters, diaries and other personal papers with official records, Kate Ariotti offers a comprehensive, nuanced account of this little- known aspect of Australian war history.
CAPTIVE ANZACS
N
ewcast
le.
This volume is part of the Australian Army History series, published in association with the Army History Unit, under the editorship of Professor Peter Stanley
Today there is a growing
CAPTIVE
ANZACS
Australian POWs of the Ottomans during the First World War
KATE ARIOTTI
of the University of New South Wales, Canberra.
demand for recognition of their service in the defence
of Australia. FTor many
Charles Bean wrote that the only memorial which could be worthy of the Diggers whose history
decades, their story has
been “marginalised in the
national narratives of
Front cover image: Langeloths, Turkey, c. 1918. Six Australian
prisoners of war outside their tent. These men were employed Australian Army History series
as rail
way con
struc
tion
workers
in the ar
Memorial, AWM H19404)
Back cover image: Belemedik, the base camp of the Berlin– Baghdad Railway project. ( John H. Wheat Photographs, ca. 1914–18, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
ea. (Au
stralian
War
he great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once said that the study of military history was
a mea
ns ‘to e
ducate the
mind
of the
future commander’. The Australian Official Historian
he recorded was ‘the bare and uncoloured story of their part in the war’. Our understanding of Australia’s military past encompasses both these aspects of history. The Australian Army and
C
ambrid
ge Un
ive
rsity Pr
APuOsWtraslioanf
the Ottomans during the
WFiorrsltd War
A R I O T T I
Lieutenant General Angus Campbell
CHIEF OF ARMY
war, narratives that have formed a key element in Australia’s
political culture and its histories.” It is no surprise that the experiences of Indigenous soldiers and the after effects of war echo that of non-Indigenous soldiers: difficulty adjusting to civilian life, an inability to forget what they had seen on the battlefield and an inability to cope with the mental torment that ensued. Serving Our Country reveals the courage, resilience, and trauma
of Indigenous defence personnel and document the long struggle to gain recognition for their role in the defence of Australia.
ess a
re dedica
ted to e
xplori
ng, analysing and understanding our nation’s
military history. This series of books is produced as a central component of recording that history.
CAPTIVE ANZACS
AUSTRALIAN POWS OF THE OTTOMANS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR By Kate Ariotti Published by Cambridge University Press
RRP $59.95 in hardcover ISBN 9781107198647 Published as part of the Australian Army History Series, Captive Anzacs
tells the story of the 198 Australian men who became prisoners of the Ottomans. By war’s end,
55 of these men were buried in graves throughout the Ottoman empire.
9781107198647 - ARIOTTI - CAPTIVE ANZACS CMYK