The Way Back by Erich Maria Remarque; Brian Murdoch (Translator)

$22.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, one of the most powerful novels of the First World War and a twentieth-century classic. The men who survived the horror of the Western Front endured unimaginable violence and the loss of their innocence - they were the lucky ones. How do they return home? Y oung, spirited Ernst is one. Finding himself inexplicably returned to his childhood bedroom, chafing, restless, he attempts to resurrect his life. If All Quiet on the Western Front was a lament for lost generation, this sequel speaks with the same resonant voice for those who came back. The is a new definitive English translation by expert Remarque-translator Brian Murdoch. 'Remarque is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank'- New York Times Book Review ...Show more

Where Soldiers Lie: The Quest to Find Australia's Missing War Dead (HB) by Ian McPhedran

$39.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

What drives veterans, military experts and forensic investigators to dedicate years to search for and identify the remains of fallen warriors? What does it mean to the families of the dead to be able to lay them to rest? Over thirty five thousand Australian soldiers and airmen are still listed as Missin g In Action from the wars of the 20th Century. Telling the moving story of the determination and skill of the searchers who apply old-fashioned detective work and cutting-edge science to solve the mysteries of the missing and bring peace of mind and solace to their families and to all those who serve, Where Soldiers Lie follows these investigators and scientists on their mission to locate and identify unrecovered war casualties and to unlock their secrets. From the jungles of Vietnam, where one man led a decade-long battle to recover and bring home the final six, to Korea, Papua New Guinea and the fields of the Somme, Flanders and Fromelles, Where Soldiers Lie is a deeply human story of perseverance, luck and resolution, a story of incredible determination against difficult odds, of exacting forensic analysis and painstaking detective work, to uncover and identify the remains of Australian soldiers, in battlefield over the decades, and to bring their remains home. Powerful, moving and compelling reading. ...Show more

The Diggers of Colditz by Jack Champ; Colin Burgess

$35.00 AUD

Category: MILITARY

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany's infamous 'escape-proof' wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to escape from t he massive floodlit stronghold . . . by any means necessary.   In this riveting account - by turns humorous, heartfelt and tragic - historian Colin Burgess and Lieutenant Jack Champ, from the point of view of the prisoners themselves, tells the story of the twenty Australians who made this castle their 'home', and the plans they made that were so crazy that some even achieved the seemingly impossible - escape!   'A stirring testimony of mateship . . . We are often on tenterhooks, always impressed by their determination, industry and courage' Australian Book Review   ...Show more

The Boer War: A History by Denis Judd; Keith Surridge

$29.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The Boer War of 1899-1902 was an epic of heroism and bungling, cunning and barbarism with an extraordinary cast of characters - including Churchill, Rhodes, Conan Doyle, Smuts, Kipling, Gandhi, Kruger and Kitchener. The war revealed the ineptitude of the British military and unexpectedly exposed the cor rupt underside of imperialism - in the establishment of the first concentration camps, the shooting of Boer prisoners-of-war and the embezzlement of military supplies by British officers. This acclaimed book provides a complete history of the Boer War - from the first signs of unrest to the eventual peace. In the process, it debunks several of the myths which have grown up around the conflict and explores the deadly legacy it left for southern Africa. ...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 Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-1945 by Max Hastings

$24.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY | Reading Level: good

'As gripping as any spy thriller ... Hastings's achievement is especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume yet written on the subject' Sunday Times 'Authoritative, exciting and notably well written' Daily Telegraph 'A serious work of rigourous and comprehensive history ... royall y entertaining and readable' Mail on Sunday Spies, codes and guerrillas played critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In 'The Secret War', Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and Resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history. Here are not only Alan Turing and the codebreaking geniuses of Bletchley Park, but also their German counterparts, who achieved their own triumphs against the Allies. Hastings plots the fabulous espionage networks created by the Soviet Union in Germany and Japan, Britain and America, and explores the puzzle of why Stalin so often spurned his agents, who reported from the heart of the Axis war machine. The role of SOE and American's OSS as sponsors of guerrilla war are examined, and the book tells the almost unknown story of Ronald Seth, an SOE agent who was 'turned' by the Germans, walked the streets of Paris in a Luftwaffe uniform, and baffled MI5, MI6 and the Abwehr as to his true loyalty. Also described is the brilliantly ruthless Russian deception operation which helped to secure the Red Army's victory at Stalingrad, a ruse that cost 70,000 lives. 'The Secret War' links tales of high courage ashore, at sea and in the air to the work of the brilliant 'boffins' at home, battling the enemy's technology. Most of the strivings, adventures and sacrifices of spies, Resistance, Special Forces and even of the codebreakers were wasted, Hastings says, but a fraction was so priceless that no nation grudged lives and treasure spent in the pursuit of jewels of knowledge. The book tells stories of high policy and human drama, mingled in the fashion that has made international bestsellers of Max Hastings' previous histories, this time illuminating the fantastic machinations of secret war. ...Show more

The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield

$35.00 AUD

Category: MILITARY | Reading Level: 3 Biography

In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was seized by the Nazis. Along with his teenage son, Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in.When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz, a certain death sentence, Fritz refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive- the love between father and son.Based on Gustav's secret diary and meticulous archive research, this book tells his and Fritz's story for the first time - a story of courage and survival unparalleled in the history of the Holocaust. ...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

Big Week by James Holland

$22.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Their goal: to smash the main factories and production centers of the Luftwaffe while also drawing German planes into an aerial battle of attrition to neutralize the Luftwaffe as a fighting force prior to the cross-channel invasion, planned for a few months later. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this aerial offensive quickly became known as "Big Week," and it was one of the turning-point engagements of World War II. In Big Week, acclaimed World War II historian James Holland chronicles the massive air battle through the experiences of those who lived and died during it. Prior to Big Week, the air forces on both sides were in crisis. Allied raids into Germany were being decimated, but German resources - fuel and pilots - were strained to the breaking point. Ultimately new Allied aircraft - especially the American long-range P-51 Mustang - and superior tactics won out during Big Week. Through interviews, oral histories, diaries, and official records, Holland follows the fortunes of pilots, crew, and civilians on both sides, taking readers from command headquarters to fighter cockpits to anti-aircraft positions and civilian chaos on the ground, vividly recreating the campaign as it was conceived and unfolded. In the end, the six days of intense air battles largely cleared the skies of enemy aircraft when the invasion took place on June 6, 1944 - D-Day. Big Week is both an original contribution to WWII literature and a brilliant piece of narrative history, recapturing a largely forgotten campaign that was one of the most critically important periods of the entire war. ...Show more

Devil's Diary: Hitler's High Priest and the Hunt for the Lost Papers of the Third Reich by Robert K. Wittman; David Kinney (As told to)

$29.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

An unprecedented, page-turning narrative of the Nazi rise to power, the Holocaust, and Hitler's post-invasion plans for Russia told through the recently discovered lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg - Hitler's 'philosopher' and architect of Nazi ideology. Only recently discovered by former FBI agent Robert Wittman, the diary of Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, who led the Nazi party when Hitler was interned in 1923, is a ground-breaking document and an object of rumour, obsession and evil. Filled with observations, conversations and Nazi plans, it gives new details of Hitler's rise to power and personal governance of the Reich. Not simply the Nazi ideological progenitor, Rosenberg was a core member of Hitler's inner circle: his ideas for the Third Reich and the destruction it wrought laid the foundations for a brainwashed nation and gave its people the justification for the slaughter of millions; he helped plan the Nazi invasion and subsequent occupation of the Soviet Union and was named Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories. With the first access to the diary's contents, 'The Devil's Diary' is the thrilling story of Rosenberg; Robert Kempner, the German-born Jewish Nuremberg lawyer who prosecuted Goring and Frick and stole the diary; Henry Mayer, the archivist who has doggedly been searching for it for decades; and Bob Wittman, the former FBI agent who finally found it and returned it to its rightful place. ...Show more

The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield

$22.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY

The boy is my greatest joy. We strengthen each other. We are one. Inseparable . . . If only we were free; but daily, hourly, death is before our eyes. In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was seized by the Nazis. Along with his teenage son, Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germ any. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in. When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz, a certain death sentence, Fritz refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive- the love between father and son. Based on Gustav's secret diary and meticulous archive research, this book tells his and Fritz's story for the first time - a story of courage and survival unparalleled in the history of the Holocaust. ...Show more

Yours Truly Came Up Smiling by HANDLEY

$29.99 AUD

Category: MILITARY