Battlefront

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.

- Otto von Bismarck (Former Chancellor of Germany) -

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know he's actually interested I decided to share the book I started a couple days ago.Now and then I share a book I'm reading; I could do a post on a new book every week and a half if I wanted to because I read a lot of books but I bore you enough with my posts without adding to it. Anyway, my buddy @dahpilot asked me yesterday what I was reading and because I

Australia has been to war many times with two being particularly significant for different reasons.

The First World War, when the Germans started some shit they couldn't finish, was the crucible that forged Australia's identity as previous to that we were England's bitch. Many thousands of Australians fought the Germans on the Western Front in Europe and the Turkish (supported by Germans) in the Gallipoli theatre...many never came back. It bound us together as a people though, gave us an identity of our own, a national identity, as we rallied behind our troops which is partly due to the leadership insisting our troops were commanded by Australian officers rather then be sent into battle as cannon fodder by British officers.

In the Second World War, when the Germans (again) started some shit they couldn't finish, Australia went to war again fighting the Germans in the skies over Britain, in the deserts of Africa and the Middle East against Erwin Rommel, and in the Pacific against the Japanese who, along with Italy and Germany, formed the Axis Powers. What made this war significant, particularly the war in the Pacific, was that the continent of Australia was under threat from the marauding forces of Japan and our troops were fighting to prevent the invasion and loss of the country.

Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory of Australia, was bombed from the air (beginning in February 1942) by the Japanese over 300 times with more ordinance dropped on it than the Japanese dropped on Pearl Harbour. The harbour was critical to land invasion through Papua New Guinea. The Japanese also snuck submarines into Sydney Harbour and torpedoed some ships.

The prelude to the ground assault on the Australian mainland was the Japanese forces landing on Papua New Guinea (then, part of the Australian realm) with their eyes on the port of Port Moresby, in July 1942 and our forces met them head on and (barely) turning them back after four terrible months of fighting. I've trekked the Kokoda Track (back in 2007) where the fighting took place, an homage to those who fought and died there, and it's a brutal mountainous jungle area but despite being out-manned some 10 to 1 against the Japanese soldiers, the Australians were successful in halting their advance across the Owen Stanly Range and saved Port Moresby, and Australia.

In the end they were repulsed and pushed back all the way to Japan by the combined forces of Australia and the American Marines and naval forces with no support from the Germans who capitulated and surrendered in Europe, on May 8 1945, and the rest is history.

There were two Generals tasked with the defense of Australia being American General Douglas MacArthur, (who left his troops in the Philippines to face a Japanese onslaught and ran away to Australia like a coward) and Australian General Thomas Blamey, who had been recalled from the Middle East to tackle the military crisis threatening Australia.

I'll not go all the way into the scenario but the book I'm reading is about the battle of wills, clashing personalities and the desperate defense of Australia that was under serious threat by the Japanese who sought our resources.

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So, that's what I'm reading at the moment...yep, another military book. It's super interesting how the two Generals operated and fascinating how the facts are somewhat different to the common understanding; Douglas Macarthur did an excellent job at portraying himself as the saviour - he had a magnificent marketing team who seemed able to miraculously make him look like the best military mind of the time - but the reality of it is much different and the part General Blamey played, despite being played down by MacArthur's propaganda machine, was instrumental.