Australian Heroes of World War II
Remarkable stories of battlefield courage
By Mark Johnston
Published by NewSouth
RRP $39.99 in paperback
ISBN 9781761170362
VIEW AUTHOR TALK @ THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL – CLICK HERE
As a basis for this book, military historian Mark Johnston has chosen to tell the stories of around 700 men who received military awards for courage during World War II.
The stories range from the north African campaign, to Crete, and to the Pacific theatre where Australians fought a tenacious enemy on the Kokoda Track.
As he went about assembling the information from a variety of sources, he was struck by ‘a certain bloodlessness about the official Australian accounts of bloody deeds’ which ran counter to the men’s own reports and recollections.
The men who were awarded medals for their bravery were not always the high-minded individuals he expected to find, but they did, it seems, share one characteristic: fearlessness.
By telling their stories within the context of the battle that raged around them, Johnston has illuminated the actions of a few to illustrate the remarkable acts of bravery that drew accolades.
Many of course went unrecorded.
But in the end, war is bloody. It’s the mental suffering that endures long after the guns fall silent. For the ‘heroes’, the memory of taking the lives of others remains uppermost in their minds. In writing this book, he has deepened our appreciation of what being a war hero really entails.
In the end, it’s ordinary men doing extraordinary things.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Mark Johnston has established himself as one of the fore-most authorities on the Australian Army in World War II. He was described in the Australian War Memorial’s Wartime magazine as ‘the leading historian on the experience of Australian soldiers during the war’.
He is Head of History at Scotch College, Melbourne, and author of 12 books, including Derrick VC in His Own Words (2021) and An Australian Band of Brothers (2018) with NewSouth Publishing.
REMEMBER TO watch the author talk Mark Johnston delivered at The Australian War Memorial,
militarybooksaustralia.com 