Showing results by author "Michael Veitch" in All Categories

Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the enemy. They were mostly all unpaid volunteers whose job it was simply to observe and report on foreign shipping and aeroplane movements. It was never envisaged that the Coast Watchers would do any fighting, nor operate inside enemy-occupied territory.

September 1942 marked the high point of Axis conquest in World War II. In the Pacific, Japan's soldiers had seemed unstoppable. However, the tide was about to turn. On Sunday, 6 September 1942, Japanese land forces suffered their first conclusive defeat at the hands of the Allies. At Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea, a predominantly Australian force - including 75 Squadron (fresh from their action in 44 Days) - fought for two weeks to successfully defend a vital airstrip against a determined Japanese invasion.

Borneo: The Last Campaign tells the story of Operation OBOE, the massive, three-pronged assault on the vast Japanese-held island of Borneo in 1945. It was one of the largest amphibious invasions of the entire war, and a virtually all-Australian operation. Over the final twelve weeks of World War Two, the 1st Australian Army Corps chased down and fought the remnants of the Japanese army over burning oil fields, up languid tropical rivers, along leech-ridden jungle tracks and across endless hills, valleys and ridges.

It is somewhere close to midnight on the clock when the men who fought the Second World War will still be with us. I have met just a few of them, sometimes goading them to reveal their experiences, at other times being simply a conduit to the river of their memories, sensing, on occasion, a kind of urgency to get it out there, just so these adventures and tragedies will not be lost to future enquiring minds. Michael Veitch has always been a keen historian and aeroplane fanatic.

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.

The more I learned, the more I realised this was an Australia I hardly knew. This was stormy weather Australia, an Australia of shipwrecks and sealers, of brutality and extermination, of folly and heroism, of wild weather and explorers in flimsy boats, of 1,000-foot cliffs and amazing birds and strange vegetation, of places well trodden and others believed never to have felt the impact of a human foot. This was a truly gothic Australia, as real and as valid as the gold and the drovers and the deserts yet known to almost no one.

A collection of vivid, unforgettable stories from RAAF veterans about their experiences of combat in World War II. It is also an account of the strange, sometimes obsessive journey of the author himself, as he explores a passion held since childhood. From bomber pilots to fighter aces, from rear gunners to bomb aimers, from stories of death and fear to tales of humor and comradeship, Michael has helped unearth the extraordinary stories of ordinary men living and fighting in extraordinary times.