© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Militaria

Read more about the article Still quiet on the western front

Still quiet on the western front

The appearance in 2022 of a new screen version of All Quiet on the Western Front has brought many of my thoughts on this extraordinary book back to mind. All Quiet on the Western Front was, strangely, a book that I deliberately skipped reading for a very long time. Even though I keenly hoovered up scores of books about The Great War of 1914-1918, I had a prejudice against Erich Maria Remarque’s book that wasn’t based on anything sensible. I guess, for a start, I wasn’t so interested in looking at the war through the eyes…

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Read more about the article The turret ship Mokatam’s long goodbye

The turret ship Mokatam’s long goodbye

For some years after the end of World War II an ungainly hulk of a ship lay moored at Stockton, Newcastle, NSW. It was a battered old rustbucket that ended up in Newcastle as part of the postwar flotsam that drifted around the Pacific in the conflict's confusing aftermath. I'd seen photos of the ship lying there, and was often curious about its extremely odd shape. It's hull was unlike other ships, with a huge bulging section down low, and I wondered what the reason was this peculiar form. In time I learned the ship's name…

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Read more about the article March 1918: Miracle at Villers-Bretonneux

March 1918: Miracle at Villers-Bretonneux

Excerpt from The Hunter Region in The Great War, by Greg and Sylvia Ray The winter of 1917-1918 was almost as bad as the one before it, but at least the troops knew what to expect. They expected cold and snow, and they also expected a big German assault as soon as the weather improved. Behind their own lines, the Germans were training for a new phase of long-awaited open warfare.Knowing this, the Allied troops were full of dread. The futile Passchendaele bloodbath had sapped the Australian battalions and weakened the core of the entire British…

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