VIVA BOOKS

The RSL Book of World War I by John Gatfield

$32.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

True stories of Aussie courage and mateship from the annals of the RSL. Publishing in the run up to the centenary of Gallipoli, this collection of 100 true stories of Aussie courage and mateship in World War I is the first in a series carrying the imprimatur of the RSL, an Australian icon which has supp orted serving and ex-service Defence Forces for nearly 100 years, stamping this series with authority and authenticity. The stories have the human element: intimate, eyewitness accounts across the breadth of Australia's war from Gallipoli to the Western Front, related with humour, pathos and vivid detail. For example: * The Gallipoli landing as related in an Anzac's letter home. * An engineer who was one of the first ashore at Gallipoli and who cut steps up the cliffs for those who followed. * General Monash on a mysterious meeting on an Anzac beach. * Major General Pompey Elliott's story of a crackshot sniper. * The curious case of the stolen cheese. * Firsthand accounts of HMAS Sydney's victory over the Emden and a battle between HMAS Sydney and a Zeppelin. * Charles Kingsford-Smith on meeting a German pilot after the war. * A Light Horse patrol daringly slipping through advancing Turkish troops to warn their mates of danger. * A sapper's account of the battle of Fromelles. * How the Melbourne Cup was run on the Western Front. And there's so much more: daring rescues in 'no man's land' and desperate action in the trenches; stories from POWs, medicos, stretcherbearers and nurses; an account of the torpedoing of a ship repatriating wounded soldiers and one about the game of two-up and how it maintained morale among frontline soldiers - you'll even find out why soldiers wore women's underwear on the Western Front. ...Show more

Monash by Grantlee Kieza

$29.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The amazing life story of the general who shaped Australia; the first major biography of Monash in over a decade. John Monash's life is emblematic of Australia's much - heralded egalitarian spirit - here is the ultimate outsider: poor, Jewish in an era which still practised anti - Semitism, bookish at a time when intellectual pursuits were frowned upon - who rose to become one of the nation's most enduring folk heroes. Despite a scandalous private life and the experience of virulent racism, he established himself as a major force, not just on the bloody fields of wartime Europe but also in post - war society, where he oversaw vital developments in making Australia into a modern nation. When he died, an astonishing 300,000 Australians attended John Monash's funeral in Melbourne. But who was this unconventional man, what drove him and how did he manage to break down so many walls to rise to such a prominent position? Beyond an account of a much - admired general, this will be the story of an extraordinary and highly unconventional life and its legacy. ...Show more

Cruiser: The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth and Her Crew by Mike Carlton

$34.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

Of all the Australians who fought in the Second World War, none saw more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth.Most were young - many were still teenagers - from cities and towns, villages and farms across the nation. In three tumultuous years they d id battle with the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vichy French and, finally, the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were nearly lost in a hurricane in the Atlantic. In the Mediterranean in 1941 they were bombed by the Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force for months on end until, ultimately, during the disastrous evacuation of the Australian army from Crete, their ship took a direct hit and thirteen men were killed.After the fall of Singapore in 1942, HMAS Perth was hurled into the forlorn campaign to stem the Japanese advance towards Australia. Off the coast of Java in March that year she met an overwhelming enemy naval force. Firing until her ammunition literally ran out, she was sunk with the loss of 353 of her crew, including her much-loved captain and the Royal Australian Navy?s finest fighting sailor, 'Hardover? Hec Waller.Another 328 men were taken into Japanese captivity, most to become slave labourers in the infinite hell of the Burma-Thai railway. Many died there, victims of unspeakable atrocity. Only 218 men, less than a third of her crew, survived to return home at war?s end.CRUISER, by journalist and broadcaster Mike Carlton, is their story. And the story of those who loved them and waited for them. ...Show more

Yours Truly Came Up Smiling

$29.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The Shot by Gary Ramage

$32.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY | Reading Level: General Adult

The heart-stoppingly adrenalin-charged - and often dangerous - life and times of Australian war photographer, Gary Ramage. He goes where the troops go - but with a camera, not a gun. As Australia's premier war photographer - and as a former soldier - Gary Ramage has been in and out of just about every c onflict zone that Australia has ever been involved in. He's been embedded with troops, lived, eaten and slept alongside them. Through good times and bad times, through rocket attacks, firefights and funerals, from photographing mass graves in Kosovo to being in East Timor when SAS troops were ambushed, from sleeping under the stars on patrol with Aussie soldiers in Afghanistan to helping out with CPR on a wounded soldier on a medivac chopper, he's been there and documented it. It takes special grit to be a war photographer - it's an extreme and dangerous job. At least 25 journalists / photojournalists have been killed in Afghanistan alone since 2001. Journalists, cameramen, photographers - they've all been captured, tortured and executed. Risk comes with the territory. This is a high adrenalin, sometimes moving, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, entirely gripping story of a man who's living an extraordinary life, documenting some of the most confronting and moving moments in international conflicts and our recent history. Here is the story behind the pictures. ...Show more

Fromelles and Pozieres: In the Trenches of Hell by Peter FitzSimons

$24.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

In the Trenches of HellOn 19 July 1916, 7000 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, there were over 5500 casualties, including nearly 2000 dead - a bloodbath that the Austral ian War Memorial describes as 'the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history.Just days later, three Australian Divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozi res, and over the next six weeks they suffered another 23,000 casualties. Of that bitter battle, the great Australian war correspondent Charles Bean would write, 'The field of Pozi res is more consecrated by Australian fighting and more hallowed by Australian blood than any field which has ever existed . . .?Yet the sad truth is that, nearly a century on from those battles, Australians know only a fraction of what occurred. This book brings the battles back to life and puts the reader in the moment, illustrating both the heroism displayed and the insanity of the British plan. With his extraordinary vigour and commitment to research, Peter FitzSimons shows why this is a story about which all Australians can be proud. And angry. ...Show more

The Survival Handbook by Dorling Kindersley Publishing Staff

$35.00 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The ultimate visual guide to camping, the wilderness, and outdoor survival skills, in a handy portable format and packaged in a functional mess pan. The Survival Handbook combines proven, no-nonsense military survival skills with indigenous bushcraft techniques. Written by a Royal Navy Chief Survival I nstructor with more than 30 years' experience, this guide covers everything from choosing the right gear to map-reading to finding and preparing food to first aid and how to react in a worst-case-scenario emergency, and even includes real-life survival stories. Clear step-by-step instructions and more than 500 specially commissioned illustrations bring each featured skill to life, and a directory on wild foods and natural dangers serves as a quick reference. Packaged in a functional mess pan case--an essential survival tool--The Survival Handbook is more than just a book, and is a great gift for anyone who loves camping and adventuring in the wilderness. Fully updated and covering everything you need to know to prepare for a camping trip and what to do if something goes wrong, The Survival Handbook is the ultimate guide to the great outdoors. ...Show more

The Backwash of War: Inspired the BBC Dramatization 'the Crimson Field' by Ellen N. La Motte

$19.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

* An inspiration for the BBC One Drama 'The Crimson Field' *'The classic account of a First World War Field Hospital 'War, superb as it is, is not necessarily a filtering process, by which men and nations may be purified. Well, there are many people to write you of the noble side, the heroic side, the e xalted side. I must write you of what I have seen, the other side, the backwash.' Ellen LaMotte, Volunteer Nurse, 4 May 1916 The 'backwash' of Ellen La Motte's controversial book are the dirty, smelly, lice and disease ridden bodies of wounded French soldiers brought into her field hospital, 10 kilometres behind the Western Front of the First World War. They compose the 'human wreckage' of highly organised and industrialised warfare. Arranged into fourteen vignettes, The Backwash of War paints a picture of that conflict which seems so familiar to modern readers with nearly a century of writing about it to draw on. Yet, even with the passage of time, Ellen La Motte's first hand observations and comments, sometimes cynical, sometimes poignant, retain a freshness and continue to make for compelling reading. Her graphic and highly vivid studies of how modern weapons of war can truly wreck the human body and mind remain a potent reminder of the true costs of conflict. No wonder the American Government banned The Backwash of War in 1918. ...Show more

The Battle of Polygon Wood by Jonathan Passlow

$19.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY | Series: Campaign Ser.

Buoyed by the success of the 1st and 2nd Australian divisions in the Battle of Menin Road, the men of the 4th and 5th Australian divisions filed into the front line ready for the next phase of the battle. Ahead of them lay the blackened remnants of Polygon Wood, a desolate expanse of splintered stumps s hattered by the devastating shellfire. The view across no man's land revealed lines of German barbed wire and a criss-cross of heavily defended trenches. Here and there the Australians could also see solid concrete pillboxes dotted around the landscape. In the centre of the battlefield sat a huge man-made mound of earth - the Butte. Once the stop-butte for an old artillery range, this dominating feature was fortified with machine-guns, laced with barbed wire and riddled with tunnels and dugouts.The Battle of Polygon Wood was the second phase in the British forces' advance on Passchendaele. Success at Polygon Wood would place Broodseinde Ridge within the Second Army's reach. But the entire operation was almost blindsided by a German counter-attack on the eve of the battle. The critical situation on the Anzac Corps right was only saved by Pompey Elliott's 15th Brigade whose desperate efforts to contain the German attack and seize the Second Army's objectives turned a 'fine success' into a 'splendid victory'. But, as author Jonathan Passlow describes in Polygon Wood 1917, this was a victory that was by no means assured and in which luck would play its part. ...Show more

No Easy Day: The Only First-hand Account of the Navy Seal Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden by Mark Owen

$19.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

No Easy Day by Mark Owen with Kevin Maurer is the first-person account of Bin Laden's execution. For the first time anywhere, a first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from inside the US Navy SEAL team who carried out the extraordinary mission to kill the terrorist maste rmind. No Easy Day puts readers inside the elite, handpicked twenty-four-man team known as SEAL Team Six as they train for the most important mission of their lives: the SEALs were going after bin Laden. From the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter that threatened the mission with disaster to the radio call confirming their target was dead, the SEAL team raid on bin Laden's secret HQ is recounted in nail-biting second-by-second detail. In No Easy Day, team leader Mark Owen takes readers behind enemy lines with one of the world's most astonishing fighting forces, in the only insider's account of their most spectacular mission. Praise for No Easy Day: "No Easy Day amounts to a cinematic account of the raid to kill Bin Laden: you feel as if you're sitting in the Black Hawk as it swoops in". (NY Times). "A blistering first-hand account". (The Sun). Mark Owen is a former member of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team Six. In his many years as a Navy SEAL, he has participated in hundreds of missions around the globe, including the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009. Owen was a team leader on Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 1 May 2011, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Owen was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist mastermind's hideout, where he witnessed bin Laden's death. Mark Owen's name and the names of the other SEALs mentioned in this book have been changed for their security. Kevin Maurer has covered special-operations forces for nine years. He has been embedded with the Special Forces in Afghanistan six times, spent a month in 2006 with special-operations units in east Africa, and has embedded with US forces in Iraq and Haiti. He is the author of four books, including several about special operations. ...Show more

Australians on the Western Front 1918 Volume II: Spearheading the Great British Offensive by David W. Cameron

$34.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

Following on from volume 1 of Australians on the Western Front 1918- The Great German Offensive, volume 2, The Battle for the Hindenburg Line, concludes with a detailed account of the final battles of World War I and the defeat of German armed forces on the Western Front. In compelling detail, David W. Cameron recounts the military successes and challenges of the Australian Army Corps, led by Lieutenant General John Monash, during a number of key battles, including the Battle of Hamel on 4 July; the Battle of Amiens on 8 August, and the Battle for Mont St Quentin and Peronne in September; culminating in the week-long battles for the Hindenburg Outpost Line and the Hindenburg Line itself, during which many Australian and American troops tragically lost their lives just as the war was finally drawing to a close. Ultimately, however, the breaking of the Hindenburg Line by Australian, Canadian, British and American troops delivered a crucial blow to the German army, who surrendered unconditionally to the Allies one month later. This book once again draws on the diaries and letters of the Australian soldiers on the battlefields to piece together the story of their heroic actions against enemy forces, placing them within the broader context of the 'war to end all wars'. ...Show more

Monash's Masterpiece: The Battle of Le Hamel and the 93 Minutes that Changed the World by Peter FitzSimons

$35.00 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph, and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle - where infantry, tanks, artillery and planes oper ated together as a coordinated force. Monash planned every detail meticulously, with nothing left to chance. Integrated use of tanks, planes, infantry, wireless (and even carrier pigeons!) was the basis, and it went on from there, down to the details: everyone used the same maps, with updated versions delivered by motorbike despatch riders to senior commanders, including Monash. Each infantry battalion was allocated to a tank group, and they advanced together. Supplies and ammunition were dropped as needed from planes. The losses were relatively few. In the words of Monash: 'A perfected modern battle plan is like nothing so much as a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respective musical phrases.' Monash planned for the battle to last for 90 minutes - in the end it went for 93. What happened in those minutes changed for the rest of the war the way the British fought battles, and the tactics and strategies used by the Allies. Peter FitzSimons brings this Allied triumph to life, and tells this magnificent story as it should be told. ...Show more