Australian Military

Dr Dan Pronk served on over 100 combat missions in Afghanistan as a frontline special forces combat doctor, where the casualties he treated were his fellow SAS soldiers and commandos, local civilians and even the enemy. The thrill of adventure and the challenges of battlefield medicine brought out the very best in Dan; he discovered a sense of purpose in pushing his medical skills and courage to the limits. But there was a cost. In this frank memoir, Dan describes the highs and lows of his military-medical career, and the very real toll they took on his mental health and family life.

‘Stop screaming, I'm scared too!' is not what you'd expect to see on the back of a loadmaster's helmet in a Chinook helicopter flying over southern Afghanistan, but for Rod Henderson it sums up his 22 years of service as a soldier in the Australian Army. This is not the story of a general or a Special Forces hero. It is the extraordinary memoir of a regular Australian soldier. Like so many others who have served their country with honour and distinction, the little-known stories of ordinary soldiers deserve to be told.

Mark Wales thought his life would end in a cornfield in Afghanistan. Mark and his SAS troops emerged from that scorched battlefield 12 hours later, his mentor gunned down, his dream career now a nightmare. Over four deployments of intense warfighting, Mark watched the line between right and wrong become blurred. When he left the SAS he was adrift, crippled by guilt. On a mission to rebuild himself, Mark turned his life around. He fought his way into the gates of a US Ivy League business school and into the boardrooms of top-tier international corporations.

The town of Wirrawee is emerging from war, slowly, like a flower after a cold snap. Businesses are starting to reopen, the school has re-commenced classes, and local farmers are gradually repossessing their land. But it's not the same Australia as before the war. A new nation exists just a few miles away, a new border that separates Australia from its invaders. Or does it?

Follow the antics of Clyde & Neville as they annoy friends and battle enemies, on water, in the air and deep in the jungles of the South Pacific during W.W. II, where they never lose their sense of humor- fighting the enemy or searching for the perfect beer. They are simple plantation owners on a South Seas Island before being chased off by the Japanese. They volunteer as Coast Watchers, working behind enemy lines. Problems occur, many of their own making and dog them as they confound both the Japanese and the Allies. Never having learned to put up with bureaucrats they go about their work,...

In 1969, Navy sailor Nick Kilmer's life was saved by an Army soldier, Sam Jackson, during an intense battle in Vietnam. Fifty years later Nick travels by motorcycle with his dog Deacon to visit Sam in Idaho. Both men struggle with service connected disabilities, but Nick carries the burden of never having the opportunity to repay Sam for saving his life. A young woman of Vietnamese descent shows up who is running for safety from cartel members. The situation becomes further complicated when Nick believes that the young woman might be Sam's granddaughter. While Sam creates a diversion, Nick,...

The incredible account of Sister Betty Jeffrey OAM and the Australian war nurses who survived the bombing of evacuation ship SS Vyner Brooke in February 1942, and subsequently spent three years in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra. During those perilous years surviving in squalid conditions, Sister Jeffrey kept a secret diary of day-to-day events which, after the war, was turned into a hugely successful book and radio serial: White Coolies. Sisters in Captivity builds on those diaries.

THE HIJACKING OF THE CRUISE SHIP OCEAN PEARL SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD. It should have been done without the death and destruction which they had experienced in Afghanistan, in East Timor, and in Iraq. But once begun, once the ship had been taken, death and destruction followed as it had done before. The ten former serving members of the Australian Army had all been bored, some in low-paying jobs, others unemployed. And so the subject had been tossed around until they had decided to proceed with Jazza’s idle suggestion that they should hijack a cruise ship for ...

Harold Cavill’s children continue their father’s work to try to prevent humanity from destroying itself in this timeline. Their sister Beatrice continues to live in a self-imposed exile on the fledgling colony on Mars while her oldest sister Judith finds love for the first time. The Cavill lunar installation at Shackleford Crater is soon joined by installations from other nations vying for their own footholds in space. America struggles at first through a disastrous progressive administration before Ronald Reagan is elected President in 1976 to lead a dramatic turnaround in the ...

It’s the 1980’s, the Cavill Family and their multi-national megacorporation have established human settlements on both the Moon and Mars. Their work in space has now significantly overshadowed their still substantial mining, energy, communications, defense and manufacturing operations still on Earth. The Cavills are also the leaders in the development of affordable clean energy on Earth and in space. But while the Cavills have continued to oppose the development of nuclear weapons because they had been the cause of humanity’s demise in Harold Cavill’s original timeline, multiple ...

In this exciting prequel to the critically acclaimed Dane Curse, a pair of black capes are found dead on the floor of Wentorf Hall, mere inches away from the world’s largest diamond. Of course the cops think the pair killed each other over the heist. After all, everyone knows that the Vandenberg Coconut is a one size fits all motivation for murder. Everyone, that is, except for Dane Curse. But when the former villain turned PI takes the case he’ll discover that the truth has more sides than a diamond has facets. And in order to get to it Dane will follow a trail that leads through an ...

In mid-2017, whispers from Australia's most secretive and elite military unit reached Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie. McKenzie and veteran reporter Chris Masters began an investigation that would not only reveal shocking information about Australia's most famous and revered SAS soldier but plunge the two reporters into the defamation trial of the century.

The Second World War is over, with the world being far different than Harold Cavill had remembered in the history of his former life in the future as James Stevenson. But his days are growing short. So Harold's children must now take up the mantle of quietly guiding the world away from a nuclear Armageddon and towards the stars. But the world remains far from a peaceful place, even as the Cavill's refocus their efforts into putting mankind into space while keeping the West strong against a variety of threats.

“After the Fall is a compelling work steeped in folklore and thriller components alike. It's highly recommended for readers seeking well-done characters, a fast pace, and a story that assumes no prior familiarity with folk legends in order to prove accessible and engrossing.” — Midwest Book Review ★★★Fans of The Prometheus Wars rejoice. Wes is back in an all-new, stand-alone adventure★★★ The Olympian gods exist, but our world is not ready for them. Wes is a wisecracking Australian known to President Elizabeth Clarke. Yet when he inexplicably materializes in the Oval Office...

Undersea Warrior: a submarine designed to pursue and attack enemy submarines and surface ships using torpedoes. This will follow the careers of four daring British submarine captains who risked their lives to keep the rest of us safe, their exploits consigned to the shadows until now. Their experiences encompass the span of the Cold War, from voyages in WW2-era submarines under Arctic ice to nuclear-powered espionage missions in Soviet-dominated seas. This is the dramatic untold story of Britain’s most-secret service.

A fascinating look at a neglected Allied front in the Southern hemisphere, Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942 follows its successful predecessors as a captivating historical document of a pivotal era in history.

This documentary series, first presented in 1985 by acclaimed producer and presenter Tim Bowden, is a harrowing account of the ordeals faced by Australian POWs in Japanese camps, at the height of World War II. Told through the first-hand accounts of survivors from the war, this series has been remastered and serves as an indispensable insight into the realities of the war in the Pacific.

It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged toward Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen—including several from Australia and New Zealand—were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution.

A little known story of two Australian battalions abandoned in Java during World War II and the heroes who kept them alive in the worst of Japan's prisoner of war camps. They were thrown into a hopeless fight against an overwhelming enemy. Later, hundreds died as prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and in the freezing coal mines of Taiwan and Japan. Through it all, wrote Weary Dunlop, they showed 'fortitude beyond anything I could have believed possible'.

The Korean War was a 20th Century conflict that has never ended. South Korea, a powerhouse economy and dynamic democracy sits uneasily alongside North Korea, the world’s most secretive, belligerent, unpredictable and repressive totalitarian state. Today, tensions simmer and occasionally flare into outright violence on a peninsula dense with arms, munitions and nuclear warheads. Cameron Forbes, acclaimed author of Hellfire, tells the story of the war and Australia’s involvement in it in a riveting narrative.