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Author: Graham Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1921941618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
The Australian Imperial Force, first raised in 1914 for overseas war service, became better known by its initials - the "AIF". There was a distinct character to those who enlisted in the earliest months and who were destined to fight on Gallipoli. During the war the AIF took its place among the great armies of the world, on some of history's oldest battlefields. The Australians would attack at the Dardanelles, enter Jerusalem and Damascus, defend Amiens and Ypres, and swagger through the streets of Cairo, Paris, and London, with their distinctive slouch hats and comparative wealth of six shillings per day. However, the legend of the AIF is shrouded in myth and mystery. Was Beersheba the last great cavalry charge in history? Did the AIF storm the red light district of Cairo and burn it to ground while fighting running battles with the military police? Was the AIF the only all-volunteer army of World War I? Graham Wilson's Bully Beef and Balderdash shines an unforgiving light on these and other well-known myths of the AIF in World War I, arguing that these spectacular legends simply serve to diminish the hard-won reputation of the AIF as a fighting force. Graham Wilson mounts his own campaign to rehabilitate the historical reputation of the force and to demonstrate that misleading and inaccurate embellishment does nothing but hide the true story of Australia's World War I fighting army. Bully Beef and Balderdash deliberately tilts at some well-loved windmills and, for those who cherish the mythical story of the AIF, this will not be comfortable reading. Yet, given the extraordinary truth of the AIF's history, it is certainly compelling reading.
Author: Graham Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1921941618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Australian Imperial Force, first raised in 1914 for overseas war service, became better known by its initials - the "AIF". There was a distinct character to those who enlisted in the earliest months and who were destined to fight on Gallipoli. During the war the AIF took its place among the great armies of the world, on some of history's oldest battlefields. The Australians would attack at the Dardanelles, enter Jerusalem and Damascus, defend Amiens and Ypres, and swagger through the streets of Cairo, Paris, and London, with their distinctive slouch hats and comparative wealth of six shillings per day. However, the legend of the AIF is shrouded in myth and mystery. Was Beersheba the last great cavalry charge in history? Did the AIF storm the red light district of Cairo and burn it to ground while fighting running battles with the military police? Was the AIF the only all-volunteer army of World War I? Graham Wilson's Bully Beef and Balderdash shines an unforgiving light on these and other well-known myths of the AIF in World War I, arguing that these spectacular legends simply serve to diminish the hard-won reputation of the AIF as a fighting force. Graham Wilson mounts his own campaign to rehabilitate the historical reputation of the force and to demonstrate that misleading and inaccurate embellishment does nothing but hide the true story of Australia's World War I fighting army. Bully Beef and Balderdash deliberately tilts at some well-loved windmills and, for those who cherish the mythical story of the AIF, this will not be comfortable reading. Yet, given the extraordinary truth of the AIF's history, it is certainly compelling reading.
Author: Graham Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925520331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
The late Graham Wilson delighted in his self-appointed role as the AIF’s myth buster. In this, his second and final volume of Bully Beef and Balderdash, he tackles another eight popularly accepted myths, exposing the ‘Water Wizard’ of Gallipoli who saved an army, dismissing the old adage that the ‘lions of the AIF’ were led by British ‘donkeys’, debunking the Gallipoli legends of the lost sword of Eureka and ‘Abdul the Terrible’, the Sultan’s champion marksman sent to dispose of AIF sniper Billy Sing, and unravelling a series of other long-standing fictions. Finally, he turns his formidable forensic mind to the ‘lost’ seven minutes at The Nek, the early cessation of the artillery barrage which led to the slaughter of the Light Horsemen immortalised in Peter Weir’s Gallipoli. Wilson’s crusade to debunk such celebrated fictions was born of the conviction that these myths do very real damage to the history of the AIF. To demythologise this nation’s Great War military history, he argues, is to encourage Australians to view the AIF’s record on its own merits. Such are these merits that they do not require any form of embellishment to shine for all time. This book is a tribute to Graham Wilson’s extraordinary passion for truth and fact and his drive to set the historical record straight.
Author: Graham Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925275922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 689
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Book Description
Like all crime and punishment, military detention in the Australian Army has a long and fraught history. Accommodating The King’s Hard Bargain tells the gritty story of military detention and punishment dating from colonial times with a focus on the system rather than the individual soldier. World War I was Australia’s first experience of a mass army and the detention experience was complex, encompassing short and long-term detention, from punishment in the field to incarceration in British and Australian military detention facilities. The World War II experience was similarly complex, with detention facilities in England, Palestine and Malaya, mainland Australia and New Guinea. Eventually the management of army detention would become the purview of an independent, specialist service. With the end of the war, the army reconsidered detention and, based on lessons learned, established a single ‘corrective establishment’, its emphasis on rehabilitation. As Accommodating The King’s Hard Bargain graphically illustrates, the road from colonial experience to today’s tri-service corrective establishment was long and rocky. Armies are powerful instruments, but also fragile entities, their capability resting on discipline. It is in pursuit of this war-winning intangible that detention facilities are considered necessary — a necessity that continues in the modern army.
Author: Carol Rosenhain
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925520188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 553
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Book Description
‘I do feel the loss of my two boys, they was my all …’ wrote grieving father Ernest Watts following the death of his two sons. Like thousands of Australians during World War I, Ernest Watts received his tragic news through the office known as ‘Base Records’. This letter was just one in a series of correspondence that lasted the duration of the war and well into the post-war period. Every letter was answered with patience and courtesy and every response carried the same signature: J.M. Lean. The Man who Carried the Nation’s Grief describes the extraordinary work of James Lean, whose office at times received over 100 letters a day from distressed families. The letters selected by author Carol Rosenhain are quoted verbatim in all their rawness, the grief, anger and disbelief of the writer signifying wounds that would take years to heal while others never would. Like those of Ernest Watts, the letters often form part of a chain of correspondence that lasted well beyond the Armistice of 1918. For one shattered father, the fate of his missing boy would never be resolved, his son’s final resting place only discovered in Pheasant Wood almost a century after he met his death. Given his crucial role as the link between anxious families and the bureaucracy of the AIF, James Lean’s remarkable work is a surprising omission from the vast body of World War I literature. Carol Rosenhain’ s book rectifies this omission with a portrait of Lean himself and the grim task at which he excelled. This is a book that describes the impact of war on families in all its devastating reality.
Author: Pat Beale
Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN: 1925588645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
1918 was a year of triumph for the Australian Corps in France yet today this is seldom recognised by most Australians. Our perceptions have been clouded by legends, built up over the past century, that have trivialised their achievement. Here an ex-soldier, Pat Beale DSO MC, uses his military background to help re-discover why and how the Corps was so successful and also the reasons their triumph has been ignored. This concise and knowledgeable account will not sit comfortably with everyone. As the author admits, he slaps a number of ‘sacred cows’ on the rump and challenges some deeply held perceptions, but he hopes it will encourage a better understanding of the great victory of those men and how they achieved it.
Author: Beth Forrest
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350096172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
How do we engage with food through memory and imagination? This expansive volume spans time and space to illustrate how, through food, people have engaged with the past, the future, and their alternative presents. Beth M. Forrest and Greg de St. Maurice have brought together first-class contributions, from both established and up-and-coming scholars, to consider how imagination and memory intertwine and sometimes diverge. Chapters draw on cases around the world-including Iran, Italy, Japan, Kenya, and the US-and include topics such as national identity, food insecurity, and the phenomenon of knowledge. Contributions represent a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. This volume is a veritable feast for the contemporary food studies scholar.
Author: Craig Deayton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925520528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
The enemy must not get the Messines Ridge at any price… So read the orders to German troops defending the vital high ground south of Ypres. On 7 June 1917, the British Second Army launched its attack with an opening like no other. In the largest secret operation of the First World War, British and Commonwealth mining companies placed over a million pounds of explosive beneath the German front-line positions in 19 giant mines which erupted like a volcano. This was just the beginning. By the end of that brilliant summer’s day, one of the strongest positions on the Western Front had fallen in the greatest British victory in three long years of war. For the ANZACs, who comprised one third of the triumphant Second Army, it was their most significant achievement to that point; for the men of the New Zealand Division, it would be their finest hour. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Messines for the Australians, whose first two years of war had represented an almost unending catalogue of disaster. This was both the first real victory for the AIF and the first test in senior command for Major General John Monash, who commanded the newly formed 3rd Division. Messines was a baptism of fire for the 3rd Division which came into the line alongside the battle-scarred 4th Australian Division, badly mauled at Bullecourt just six weeks earlier. The fighting at Messines would descend into unimaginable savagery, a lethal and sometimes hand-to-hand affair of bayonets, clubs, bombs and incessant machine-gun fire, described by one Australian as ‘72 hours of Hell’. After their string of bloody defeats over 1915 and 1916, Messines would prove the ultimate test for the Australians.
Author: Australian Army Legal Corps
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1922132519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
Justice in Arms brings to life a fascinating and important element of Australia’s legal history — the role of Army legal officers in Australia and in expeditionary operations from the Boer War until 2000. This is a comprehensive and absorbing history which describes the dynamic interaction of institutional and political imperatives and the personalities who managed this interaction over the decades. It is populated by colourful characters and legal luminaries and demonstrates that military justice is rightly concerned with discipline and cohesiveness. Reflecting broader societal norms, it is also concerned with the rule of law and respect for the rights, liberties and fair treatment of those who serve in the armed forces. Justice in Arms describes the extraordinary contribution of Army legal officers to both the profession of arms and the development of the law, charting the evolving personal and structural relationships between Army legal officers and command dictated by the changing legal needs of the Army and the broader Australian Defence Force. Today Army legal officers apply, adapt and shape the law to meet evolving needs in peacetime and during armed conflict and peace operations, ensuring the legitimacy of military action and the maintenance of domestic and international support for national objectives.
Author: Geoffrey Grant Quail
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925520234
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
Historically, prolonged campaigns have been frequently lost or won because of the greater fitness of one of the combatant armies. In the twentieth century, infection was still a major problem, leading to withdrawal from Gallipoli, and the near defeat of the Allies due to malaria early in the Second World War’s Pacific campaign. Malaria emerged again as a major problem in the Vietnam War. The Australian Army Medical Corps, founded in 1901, learned from past medical experience. However, errors leading to significant morbidity did occur mainly in relation to malaria. These errors included lack of instruction of doctors sent to New Guinea with the Australian Force in the Great War, inadequate prophylactic measures against malaria in New Guinea early in World War Two, failure to perceive the threat of emerging resistant strains of malaria in the 1960s, and military commanders not fully implementing the recommendations of their medical advisers. Many Australian campaigns have taken place in tropical locations; a substantial amount of scientific work to prevent and manage tropical diseases has therefore been conducted by the Army Medical Corps’ medical researchers—particularly in the Land Headquarters Medical Research Unit and the Army Malaria Institute. Their work extends well beyond the military, greatly improving health outcomes throughout the world. This book recognises the efforts of both.
Author: Damien Finlayson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925520358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Few soldiers on the Western Front had heard of the Australian Electrical and Mechanical Mining and Boring Company, even after it had been renamed the ‘Alphabet Company’ by an AIF wag. Yet many knew the work of this tiny unit which numbered fewer than 300 at full strength. Despite its small size, the Alphabet Company’s influence was enormous and spanned the entire British sector of the Western Front, from the North Sea to the Somme. The Lightning Keepers: the AIF’s Alphabet Company in the Great War is the story of the ‘Alphabeticals’ who, led by Major Victor Morse, DSO, operated and maintained pumps, generators, ventilation fans, drilling equipment and other ingenious devices in extreme circumstances. Given the horrendous conditions in which the troops lived and fought, this equipment was desperately needed, as were the men who operated it in the same, often nightmarish setting. This is the first account of the dynamic little unit that was the Alphabet Company, a unit that has been neglected by history for a century. It is the story of the men, their machinery and the extraordinary grit they displayed in performing some of the most difficult tasks in a war noted for the horrific conditions in which it was waged. They do not deserve to be forgotten.
