Militaria

//Militaria
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  • An oral history of D-Day where the stories of that long and violent day on the Calvados Coast of Normandy are told in the words of the men who were Americans, British, Canadians, French and German. Follow these men ashore, up the beach, and into the battle for Normandy. The men who landed on UTAH and OMAHA beach, cracked the Atlantic Wall at Arromanches, parachuted into Carantan or Ste Mere Eglise, or stormed Pegasus Bridge and the Merville battery, tell the reader what it was like to be there, in the midst of the most important single battle of World War II. The view from landing ship, tank turret, parachute harness or infantry fox hole has never been better told than in the pages of this absorbing book. Illustrated with archival photographs.
  • Two true war time stories of Australia: Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney Harbour in 1942, stunning Australia with their preparations, strategy and the aftermath - an attack that could have paved the way for the first wartime invasion in Australia's history. The greatest mass escape of prisoners-of-war in British milirtary history took place in the small country town of Cowra in 1944. The attempt was hopeless - 231 Japanese and 4 Australians were killed.  Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • Toward the end of 1977, articles appeared in Australian newspapers about a remarkable 97 year-old Australian who had just died in Khartoum. They told of an heroic figure who had been with General Freyberg, then a junior officer, when he made his daring Dardenelles swim before the landing at Gallipoli; who had been mentioned in dispatches at the Battle of Beersheba; who had been with Lawrence of Arabia and who had won several decorations, including the George Cross  for bravery under fire when he was chauffeur to the Governor-General of the Sudan at the time of his assassination in Cairo in 1924. He was one of the few Australians ever to win the coveted Serbian Eagle.  This incredible Australian was Frederick Hamilton March.  The newspaper articles so intrigued Sekuless than he began keeping a file on Fred March. Eventually, he travelled to Khartoum, Cairo, Gallipoli and London in a quest for information about this elusive and unknown Aussie hero to piece together the fascinating story of Fred March.   Illustrated with black and white archival photographs.
  • The story of the famous Polish Squadron stationed in Britain in Word War II. Their hearts are with their families and loved ones at home but their fears and feelings must be put aside when the German offensive intensifies and they are called up to defend Britain from Hitler's Luftwaffe. Also starring Cara Theobald, Anna Prus and Andrew Woodall.
  • Red Morgan's story begins in the great depression of the thirties to the forties, when Morgan and his sisters had to line up at the cake shop for stale cakes and then scavenge through the market garbage tips for enough food to survive on. It takes the reader through his service in the Royal Navy Cadets at the age of twelve then into the Welsh Home Guard at the age of fourteen. England was under threat of being invaded by the Germans and his home town of Swansea was being bombed every night. At fifteen he tried to join the British Merchant Navy but was told he was too young. He then joined the Norwegian Maritime Service which requested a letter and signature from his father and proof of age. He wrote a note, forged his father's signature and was on a Norwegian tanker the very next day. The war was raging now, and ships were being sunk faster than they could be built and at fifteen, Morgan was right in the middle of it all. Life at sea was hell and there are tears, laughter and one hell of a lot of loving going on during the war years as he served on petrol tankers, the most dangerous ships afloat. The story moves from ports in America, Iran, Iraq, Durban, Cape Town, India, Lorenco Marques, Italy, Alexandria and many more around the world - and many nights spent in the lockups in some of these ports. This book is a true story, written in a manner which makes the readers feel that they are in the book with the author and in his exploits around the world, written as it happened with no punches pulled, warts and all. Illustrated with black and white photographs.  
  • In October 1943 Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin signed a solemn pact that once their enemies were defeated the Allied powers would 'pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their accusers in order that justice may be done'. Nowhere did they say that justice would be selective. But it would prove to be just that. This book outlines the treachery of the British, American and Australian governments who turned a blind eye to those who experimented on Australian prisoners of war with details on how Nazis hired by ASIO were encouraged to settle in Australia and how the Catholic Church, CIA and MI6 helped the worst Nazi war criminals escape justice. While our soldiers were asked to risk their lives for King and country, Allied corporations traded with the enemy; Nazi and Japanese scientists were enticed to work for Australia, the US and UK; and Australia's own Hollywood hero Errol Flynn was associating with Nazi spies...What else did they hide?
  • Who is Captain Sir Tom Moore? You've seen him on the television walking the length of his garden. A frail elderly man, doing his bit at a time of crisis. But he wasn't always like this. From a childhood in the foothills of the Yorkshire Dales, Tom Moore grew up in a loving family, which wasn't without its share of tragedy. It was a time of plenty and of want. When the storm clouds of the Second World War threatened, he raised his hand and like many of his generation, joined up to fight. His war would take him from a country he had never left to a place which would steal his heart, India and the Far East, to which he would return many years later to view the sight he had missed first time around: the distant peak of Everest.  Captain Tom's story is our story. It is the story of our past hundred years here in Britain. It's a time which has seen so much change, yet when so much has stayed the same: the national spirit, the can-do attitude, the belief in doing your best for others. Illustrated with photographs.
  • Shot down in 1942, young Australian fighter pilot John Williams DFC became a POW in the notorious Stalag Luft III camp in Germany. John had joined the air force shortly before the outbreak of war and, in the larrikin tradition, led his squadron into air combat over the deserts of Libya and Egypt dressed in sandals and shorts. John and his best mate Rusty Kierath were among the 76 POWs who tunnelled their way out of the supposedly escape-proof camp under the noses of their German guards in what later became the Hollywood blockbuster, The Great Escape. Their families never learned what really happened once the pair made it out into the forest. John's niece Louise Williams has pieced together his life, from his upbringing in a tight-knit family hit hard by the Depression, to his exploits in the air, and the many missing details of the tragic escape. It is a powerful and intimate story of one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • As we crowded the decks off Gallipoli and watched the first shells crash into Turkish soil... Trooper Ion L. Idriess of the 5th Australian Light Horse began keeping a diary. Over the next three years as the regiment moved onto Palestine, stormed Beersheba and pushed into the Sinai, his diary grew and became one of the most vivid pieces of war narrative ever written. Unconcerned with grand strategy or moralisations, Idriess records the realities of his war - maggot-ridden trenches crowded with the corpses of his mates, the good friendships, the bad tucker, the heat, the dust, the boredom of desert patrols - and always the fighting and his reactions to it, which reveal far better than mere description, since he was there. The rifle fire grew to a roar that drowned the voice of the man next to me. I felt as a stone age man might feel if volcanoes all around him suddenly spat life and roared...Believed to be Idriess' earliest work.