Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Military

This is the story of the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war - a barely known episode of unimaginable horror. After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors transferred 2700 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp some eight miles inland of Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo. For decades after the Second World War, the Australian and British governments would refuse to divulge what happened here, for fear of traumatising the families of the victims.

On 19 July 1916, 7,000 Australian soldiers - in the first major action of the AIF on the Western Front - attacked entrenched German positions at Fromelles, in Northern France. By the next day, no fewer than 5,500 were wounded and just under 1,900 were dead - a bloodbath that the Australian War Memorial describes as 'the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history'. Just days later, three Australian divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozières, and over the next six weeks they suffered another 23,000 casualties.

A riveting account of the hidden war in the mountains and cities of the world's most dangerous conflict and the comradeship between man and dog that has saved numerous lives. In Afghanistan, sometimes all that stands between coalition troops and death or serious injury is a dog. Highly trained dogs and their handlers search for improvised explosive devices or hidden weapons out on patrol with combat troops. It's a perilous job, often putting them right in the firing line and making them high-priority targets for the Taliban insurgents they're fighting. 

One of the most popular accounts by an Australian veteran of WWI - written entirely from the private soldier's point of view.

The secret and dangerous operations of Australia's Pacific War Catalina crews told for the first time. RAAF Black Cats chronicles a little-known, yet crucial and courageous chapter in Australia's war history. While this story involved Australia and the United States, very few people on either side of the Pacific know of the significance the RAAF Catalina Squadrons had on the outcome of the war against Japan and General Douglas MacArthur's triumphant 'return' to the Philippines.

Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner, he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head.

The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War. Now a major six-part television series. By the end of the Great War, 45 Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas service and over 200 had been decorated. These were the women who left for war looking for adventure and romance but were soon confronted with challenges for which their civilian lives could never have prepared them.

A gripping tale of betrayal and counterbetrayal that tells the story of the most enigmatic member of the Cambridge spy ring - Donald Maclean. Donald Maclean was a star diplomat, an establishment insider and a keeper of some of the West's greatest secrets. He was also a Russian spy, driven by passionately held beliefs, whose betrayal and defection to Moscow reverberated for decades.

There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. Deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death. Stubborn Buggers is the story of 12 Australian POWs who fought and survived the battle for Malaya, then captivity and slave labour, followed by the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol.

It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai.

The remarkable untold WWII story of the US airman who was shot down over Nazi-occupied France and evaded Gestapo pursuers for more than six months. Arthur Meyerowitz was on his second air mission over France when he was shot down in 1943. He was one of only two men on the B-24 Liberator known as Harmful Lil' Armful who escaped death or immediate capture on the ground. After fleeing the wreck, Meyerowitz knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse....

In 2012, combat engineer Curtis McGrath was serving in the Australian army in Afghanistan when, in the line of duty, he stepped on a mine. Seriously injured but still conscious and aware he'd bleed out and die within minutes, McGrath, as the unit's chief first-aid officer, directed his comrades to apply tourniquets and administer an IV and morphine. Then, as he was stretchered to a helicopter, fearing he would never see his family again, he joked that he planned to become a Paralympian.

A battle that could not be won. An island that could not be defended. An ally that could not be trusted. A little known story of two Australian battalions abandoned in Java during World War II and the heroes who kept them alive in the worst of Japan's prisoner of war camps. They were thrown into a hopeless fight against an overwhelming enemy. Later, hundreds died as prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and in the freezing coal mines of Taiwan and Japan. Through it all, wrote Weary Dunlop, they showed 'fortitude beyond anything I could have believed possible'.   

Mark Kurzem was living at Oxford when his father, Alex, showed up with a secret to tell. During World War II, young Alex was made to promise never to reveal his true identity. The Jewish boy became part of the Nazi machine that killed his own people. Alex kept this secret from even his wife and children. But his torment increased and he became determined to uncover his Jewish roots. Shunned by a Holocaust organization, he went to his son Mark for help in regaining his identity.

In 1980, Tom Keneally walked into a store in Beverly Hills owned by Polish Jew Leopold Pfefferberg Page to buy a new briefcase. For the next few years, Tom's life was taken over by this charismatic and driven man, known as Poldek, and the story he wanted shared.

In this intensely personal account, Barry Heard draws on his own experiences as a young conscript, along with those of his comrades, to look back at life before, during, and after the Vietnam War. The result is a sympathetic vision of a group of young men who were sent off to war completely unprepared for the emotional and psychological impact it would have on them. It is also a vivid and honest portrayal of the author’s post-war, slow-motion breakdown, and how he dealt with it. Well Done, Those Men attempts to make sense of what Vietnam did to the soldiers who fought there.

In his laconic, unassuming manner, General Peter Cosgrove recalls his early career days, including his harrowing tour of duty in Vietnam where he won the Military Cross, to his personal insights into major historical events such as 9/11, The Tampa Crisis and the liberation of East Timor.

This documentary series, first presented in 1985 by acclaimed producer and presenter Tim Bowden, is a harrowing account of the ordeals faced by Australian POWs in Japanese camps, at the height of World War II. Told through the first-hand accounts of survivors from the war, this series has been remastered and serves as an indispensable insight into the realities of the war in the Pacific.

Steve Sailah from ABC Radio Affairs interviewed six Australians who took part in a young nation's first major military campaign at Gallipoli in 1915. There original Anzacs have since passed on, but their stories remain fresh - the stories of naive young men eager to defend the Mother Country but who had no concept of the horrors they would encounter and the wretched conditions they would endure.

Lost for 13 months in the wilds of Afghanistan, this is the dramatic, heart-warming and truly amazing story of Sarbi, the Army's most famous explosives detection dog - the miracle dog of Tarin Kot. Powerful, dramatic, heartwarming, this is the true story of Sarbi, the scruffy black Labrador-cross trained by the Australian Army as an explosives detection dog for the most dangerous combat mission imaginable. Thirteen months after Australia's most famous canine warrior went missing in action in 2008, she was found by an American Special Forces officer patrolling a village....

From the hills of South Lebanon to the monsoon jungles of Southern Asia, Ray Goggins has operated in a life-and-death world. In the suffocating humidity of Liberia, the mountains of Afghanistan and the snow-covered Balkans, Goggins has seen the best and worst qualities in himself and others. From conflict zones to terrorist attacks and hostage rescues, Ray has learned the greatest life lessons: how to control fear, how to react calmly and positively and how to create a strong baseline from which to take action.