|
|
...without a British Fleet, 'Fortress' Singapore became little more than the anchor point for a flimsy screen of troops extending through a chain of islands to the north of Australia. An Australian 'picket fence' version of a Maginot Line - our only protection in the dark early days of the Pacific War. With three quarters of Australia's overseas fighting strength committed to the war with Germany and still in the Middle East, the sacrificial task of defending the 'Line' fell to the ill-fated 8th Division. At the outbreak of war with Japan they were the troops who absorbed the initial crushing impact of the Japanese assault on S.E. Asia and the Pacific - in Malaya, on Singapore and the lonely island outpost of the north of Australia. ...in five short weeks of bitter fighting the Division lost nearly 2500 men killed in action - one third of all Australian Army battle deaths during the three and a half years of the Pacific War. The story of that struggle, as told through the eyes of one of its units - the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion - provides the background for the Battalion history. The Western Australian Battalion, formed in 1940, was in the thick of the fighting on Singapore. Its members suffered the agony of defeat at the fall of the island and shared the horrors of three and half years as Prisoners of War under the Japanese. ISBN 0 85905 235 4 1997, Hard Cover, 388pp, illustrated, 880grams, $60.00* + POST THE AUTHOR Les Cody was born in 1918 at Boulder and grew up on the Eastern Goldfields, attending the Christian Brothers College Kalgoorlie before moving to Perth. He commenced his army training in 1940 and in December of that year transferred to the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion AIF. He was wounded in action on Singapore and in May 1942, as a POW, was in the first party to leave Singapore for Burma to commence work on the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway. In September 1945 he was a member of a combined POW/Graves Commission Survey Unit that located and identified 12,000 Allied POW graves scattered along the 415 kilometres of the Railway. All Hesperian Press books are printed on quality paper and will not discolour with age. They are section sewn, the pages will not drop out and the binding will not crack. This book is made to last. |
