© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

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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Imperial hubris and the fall of Singapore

The wartime dealings of Australian Prime Minister John Curtin with his British counterpart Winston Churchill have become the stuff of Australian folklore. Some historians have portrayed Curtin as Australia’s bold saviour, while others have accused him of being a nitpicking panic-merchant. Thanks to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which some years ago made many formerly secret telegrams and cables between the two leaders and other leading figures of the period publicly available on its website, interested readers can make up their own minds. WHEN wartime Prime Minister John Curtin used to remind Australians that:…

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An uncensored letter from wartime New Guinea

To beat the official censors who read mail sent by Australians serving in New Guinea in World War 2, those servicemen sometimes got their mates going home on leave to carry letters and post them in Australia. It was a simple and effective way to evade the prying eyes of officialdom, whose job it was to make sure that important military details didn't accidentally fall into enemy hands and that the people at home didn't hear too much about the grim reality of the war. Accounts I have read by servicemen suggest that mail from home…

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