Remove from your active Pick list Save for later

Men at war : Australia, Syria, Java 1940-1942

Mitchell, Colin James, 1946-2023

Book

Total copies: 1

Available: 1

Availability by location

Place reservation

Summary

Men at War tells the story of the Australian 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, which was raised in Victoria in 1940 after Australia entered the Second World War. In 1941 and 1942 the battalion fought two short and costly campaigns. The first, against the Vichy French in Syria, was victorious and won the Pioneers praise. The second, in Java against the Japanese, was doomed from the start--the Pioneers landed lacking equipment, ammunition and rations. Abandoned by Canberra and the Generals, they eventually surrendered. Men at War tells how a thousand strangers became connected with each other and with the battalion, how they varied in background and motivation, how they managed being soldiers - their comradeship, loves, rivalries, homesickness, sex lives - how they dealt with fear, courage and cowardice, and how they clung to contact with home. It is also a story about how their families dealt with absence, apprehension and loss. As a military history it ranges from broad strategy through to vivid descriptions of hand-to-hand combat told by the Pioneers themselves. As a social history it ranges from how mothers hoped to prevent their sons from enlisting through to the active role taken by mothers, wives and sweethearts to support the soldiers through auxiliaries and fundraising.