If not for the famous Indian mutiny-rebellion of 1857, the Santal ‘Hul’ (rebellion) of 1855 would today be remembered as the most serious uprising that the East India Company ever faced. Instead, this rebellion–to which 10 per cent of the Bengal Army’s infantry was committed and in which at least 10,000 Santals died–has been forgotten. While its memory lived among Santals, British officers published little about it, and most of the sepoys involved died in 1857. In the words of one British ...

What does Australia's military history reveal about us?In Beyond The Broken Years fifty years after The Broken Years, Bill Gammage's classic on World War One soldiers, was published provocative military historian Peter Stanley argues why it's vital for Australians to understand how our military past has been created. By whom, how and with what consequences.Stanley explores military history and the storytellers from historians Charles Bean,...

The island of New Aachen is a hotbed of turmoil, with more than just the enemy in the firing line.In May 1945, as Europe celebrates the end of WWII, the Pacific theatre remains a brutal battleground. On the remote Pacific Island of New Aachen, the site of a massacre of Australian troops three years prior, tensions run high.David Wachter, a veteran turned war historian clerk, joins a group of correspondents to cover the conflict and bring home the story of the...

In 1945, the small island of Tarakan off Borneo's coast became the unlikely stage for one of the Second World War's most gruelling campaigns. As part of General Douglas MacArthur's plan to liberate the Netherlands Indies, Australian soldiers launched Operation Oboe One, a mission to capture Tarakan’s airstrip. What was meant to last three weeks stretched into two months of bitter jungle warfare, claiming 240 Australian lives and 1,500 Japanese defenders. The airstrip’s strategic goal falte...

Based on the most famous animal in Australian history Simpson's Donkey tells the story of his service during the Gallipoli campaign where for three weeks he was one of several donkeys that Simpson used to carry wounded men down to Anzac Cove. His life before and after Gallipoli is a mystery but Peter Stanley beautifully imagines the rest for the reader.Stanley tells the donkey's story--in the donkey's own voice--taking the reader on a journey from the Aegean island of Lemn...

It finally happened… and the aliens were out for conquest.Amid a worldwide invasion, a secluded part of the world holds its own against the unwelcome intruders.Flight Lieutenant Nathan Harvey, a helicopter pilot from the Royal New Zealand Air Force is recruited into the CAVDEV, an experimental powered armor unit.He quickly finds himself leading the fight on the front lines against an overwhelming alien force.Can Harvey and his clande...

Australiansremember the dead of 25 April 1915 on Anzac Day every year. But do we know thename of a single soldier who died that day? What do we really know about themen supposedly most cherished in the national memory of war?Peter Stanleygoes looking for the Lost Boys of Anzac: the men of the very first wave to landat dawn on 25 April 1915 and who died on that day. There were exactly 101 ofthem. They were the first to volunteer, the first to go into action, and thefirst of the 60,0...

After four decades from the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina over possession of the Falklands/Malvinas islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, this book allows for a new and rounded reading of the causes, course and consequences of the war.It provides a comprehensive overview of the Falkland/Malvinas War by integrating the military history of the conflict into the diplomatic, political, social and cultural aspects of the war. Including a substantial body of advocacy, chronicle, ...

At exactly 1.30 p.m. on 1 September 1918, the dozen men of Nine Platoon, 21st Australian Infantry Battalion, rose from Elsa Trench and walked across a weedy beet-field toward the German defenders of Mont St Quentin. Within hours, three were dead and five more were wounded, one of whom died six weeks later. The survivors returned from war, more-or-less intact, to live through the next sixty-odd years in the shadow of that traumatic event.Men of Mont St Quentin tells the sto...

A compelling, riveting read, Commando to Colditz is an unusual perhaps unique war story. It is centred around a most unusual war hero: Michael 'Micky' Burn, soldier, poet and novelist, whose journey from fascist follower, to commander of Six Troop, to Commando, to prisoner (and communist lecturer) in the notorious prison of Colditz forms the focal point of this powerful narrative. In 1942 Micky led his commando troop of 28 men on one of the most daring raids of the Second World Wa...

Australia's official war correspondent during WWI, Charles Bean wasalso Australia's first official war historian and the driving force behindthe creation of the Australian War Memorial. Famously criticised forhis deliberate myth-making as editor of The Anzac Book, Bean was alsoa public servant, institutional leader, author, activist, thinker, doer,philosopher, and polemicist.In Charles Bean, Man, myth, legacy, Australia's top military historians including Peter St...

Australians are becoming increasingly fascinated by their military history, and every year greater numbers visit the scenes of the battles commemorated each Anzac Day - Villers-Bretonneux, Long Tan, Kokoda, Gallipoli itself. But what can you learn from visiting a battlefield? And how do you make sure you get the most out of the experience?Peter Stanley, one of Australia's most experienced military historians, a veteran of battlefield research in Borneo and Egypt, Turkey and France,...