Australian Military

Simultaneous release of the thrilling new volume of true stories from airmen of the Second World War, from the author of Flak (also available in audio by Bolinda). Michael Veitch's life-long obsession with the aircraft of the Second World War led him to conclude that every single person who flew, or flew in them, has at least one extraordinary story to tell. With most of these veterans in their 80's, he knew that it was a matter of urgency to find them now, before their personal stories disappear forever.

Harry Freame was the first Australian to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal at Gallipoli. Raised as a samurai, he risked his life again and again to scout the beaches and hills of the battlefield, reporting invaluable intelligence back to his officers and relieving stranded soldiers who otherwise would surely have died. Some say he should have got the VC but didn't because he was half-Japanese, a fact he tried hard to conceal. After the war, Harry (real name Henry Wykeham Koba Freame) became a soldier settler and champion apple grower.

A unique collection of poignant, horrific, sad and sometimes dryly humorous stories and yarns from the bloody battlefield of Gallipoli. This is not a history, nor is it an individual soldier's story. Rather Jim Haynes has done what he does so well and pulled together the many yarns and stories and verses written about Gallipoli - everything from the firsthand accounts of being recruited to memories of ordinary soldiers written from the trenches and accounts of the aftermath.

There is nothing more important than love and refuge. Egypt, 1941. Only hours after disembarking in Alexandria, William Marsh, an Australian corporal at 21, is facedown in the sand, caught in a stoush with the Italian enemy. He is saved by James Kelly, a childhood friend from Sydney and the last person he expected to see. But where William escapes unharmed, not all are so fortunate. William is sent to supervise an army depot in the Western Desert, with a private directive to find an AWOL soldier: James Kelly.

Last Christmas Marcie Sullivan said a final goodbye to her husband, Bobby. This Christmas, she wants to find the man who saved his life and gave her three more years to love him. Ian Buchanan dragged Bobby's shattered body onto a medical transport four years ago, then disappeared once their unit arrived stateside. Since then, Marcie's letters to Ian have gone unanswered. Marcie tracks Ian to the tiny town of Virgin River and finds a man as wounded emotionally as Bobby was physically. As Marcie pushes her way into his reclusive life, she discovers a sweet soul beneath a rough exterior.

Shane Daniels and Romany Zetz have been drawn into a war that is not their own. Lives will be destroyed, families will be torn apart. Trust will be broken. When the war is over, some will return to a changed world. Will they discover that glory is a lie? Claire G. Coleman's new novel takes us to a familiar world to again ask us what we have learned from the past. The Old Lie might not be quite what you expect.

The story of the emergence and dominance of two brilliant Australian soldiers who commanded the most effective armies in defeating the Germans and the Turks in the Great War. 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.

The bombs were falling and the smoke rising from the concentration camps, but all Hitler's daughter knew was the world of lessons with Fraulein Gelber and the hedgehogs she rescued from the cold. Was it just a story or did Hitler's daughter really exist? And If you were Hitler's daughter, would all the horror that occurred be your fault, too? Do things that happened a long time ago still matter?

The son of a struggling country butcher, Stan Savige left school at 12 to become a blacksmith’s striker. But in 1915, a passage in the Bible inspired the devout scout leader and Sunday school teacher to enlist. Soon, his abilities as a crack marksman attracted the attention of officers and he was put in charge of the sniper’s post, his job to eliminate enemy assassins at Anzac Cove. Savige succeeded and survived Gallipoli, only to be sent to the Western Front, then to Persia as part of the elite squad Dunsterforce.

It is 1885. After a decade spent fighting for Queen and Country across the globe, Colonel Ian Steele is enjoying the quiet life in the colony of New South Wales, reunited with his friend Conan Curry and watching over his children and numerous business enterprises. But the British Empire's pursuits are ceaseless, and when the colony's soldiers are required to assist a campaign in Sudan, North Africa, Ian's son Lieutenant Josiah Steele heeds the call, despite an ultimatum from the love of his life, Marian.

Hugh Riminton was a small-town New Zealand teenager with a possible drinking problem and a job cleaning rat cages when a chance meeting with a radio news director changed his life. The news man took a chance on him, and at 17 Riminton became a cadet reporter. Over nearly 40 years he has been shot at, blown up, threatened with deportation and thrown in jail. He has reported from nearly 50 countries, witnessed massacres in Africa, wars and conflicts on four continents, and every kind of natural disaster.

Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Ian McPhedran takes us to the heart of the RAAF through personal accounts of fighter pilots’ bombing raids over Iraq, of hi-tech spy planes over Afghanistan, of the operational nerve centre of the Middle East war, and of the men and women who deliver humanitarian aid across the world. This is the compelling narrative, in the RAAF’s 90th year, of its aircraft, leadership, traditions, and personalities at a time of rapid change.

This is the story of how a teenage Australian soldier, George Aspinall, took his remarkable photographs as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, providing a detailed record of those desperate years from 1942-45, when British, Australian, Dutch and American troops were being driven beyond endurance as slave labour for the Imperial Japanese Army.

Bill was massive. He had power, intelligence, and unmatched courage. In performance and character he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian horses sent to the Middle East in the Great War. But as war horses go he had one serious problem. No one could ride him but one man - Major Michael Shanahan. Some even thought Bill took a sneering pleasure in watching would-be riders hit the dust. Bill the Bastard is the remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount. They fought together.

Will Trent is undercover at Fort Knox. His assignment: to investigate a 22-year-old murder. His suspect's name: Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher is in Fort Knox on his own mission: to bring down a dangerous criminal ring operating at the heart of America’s military. Except now Will Trent is on the scene. But there’s a bigger conspiracy at play - one that neither the special agent nor the ex-military cop could have anticipated.

John "Preacher" Middleton is closing Jack's Bar when a woman and her young son come in out of the wet night. A Marine who has seen his share of pain, Preacher knows a crisis when he sees one - the woman is covered in bruises. He wants to protect them, and to punish whoever did this, but he knows immediately that this is more than just instinct. Paige Lassiter has stirred up emotions in this gentle giant of a man - emotions that he has never allowed himself to feel.

For many years, thousands of people have walked past an unassuming black timber fishing boat bobbing in the water down at the wharves of Sydney's Darling Harbour. But appearances can be deceptive. This humble little trawler played a key role in one of World War II's most audacious and successful commando raids. In September 1943, fourteen young Z special operatives sailed the small fishing boat from Australia to Japanese-occupied Singapore. Battling deadly tides, fierce storms, hostile ships and detection from the air, this little ship and its crew made it to the heart of the enemy stronghold.

As the son of 'the Colonial', legendary Queen's Captain Ian Steele, Josiah Steele has big shoes to fill. Although his home in the colony of New South Wales is a world away, he dreams of one day travelling to England so he can study to be a commissioned officer in the Scottish Regiment. After cutting his teeth in business on the rough and ready goldfields of Far North Queensland's Palmer River, he finally realises his dream and travels to England, where he is accepted into the Sandhurst military academy.

Over a decorated 34-year career, Commodore Scott served in 10 submarines, passed the most demanding military command course in the world and served as the Head of Profession of the Submarine Arm of the Royal Australian Navy. During that time his character was forged by the challenges of naval service, success and failure as a leader, catastrophic onboard disasters while dived, and life-threatening traumas. Along the way, he also endured personal battles with self-doubt, addiction, depression and anxiety.

The controversial Battle at Xa Long Tan was not only a critical episode in Australia's Vietnam involvement; it was also a textbook nightmare in the history of jungle warfare. Reconstructing this dramatic action from secret documents and the vivid recollections of many diggers who fought at Long Tan, Terry Burstall challenges the official army version.