A BASTARD OF A PLACE: Australians in PApua

[Warwick]

Great read for all those interested in the New Guinea campaign of WWII.
Written by Peter Brune and covers the following campaignss;
Kokoda
Milne Bay
Gona Buna
Sanananda.
Mainly about the Australian units involved but does do some justice to the few American units that fought there as well.
Excert from the book:
The lethargic flow of the brackish water had also borne the incomplete, maggot infested Japanese corpse to softly nudge them or float slowly past.
If you needed a shit here, you didn't have toilet paper, so you wiped your arse with your hand or sand or leaves and then washed it in the swamp. You took your socks off only when clean socks arrived-they'd only had one change. And hungry! Just one feed a day. To all who fought here, this was a bastard of a place.

 

[A Can of Man]

The Jungle... the swamp.... I know what it's like though I never had the misfortune of having to fight there.
Basically the instant you hit a swamp everything just starts to decompose... including yourself. Hats off to those guys who survived it.

 

[Young Winston]

I must read it.

I saw it in the local bookshop yesterday.

"Kokoda" is another good one. Can't remember the author.

 

[AussieNick]

Kokoda was outstanding. Frightening to imagine going through what those guys did. Cheers to them, for the first defeat inflicted on the Japanese in the land war of WW2.