Unsung Ordinary Men

UNSUNG ORDINARY MEN by Sally Dingo is a very personal investigation into the ongoing effects of war - on the soldiers, their wives and children - when a soldier came home. UNSUNG ORDINARY MEN was inspired by Sally's own experiences when her father returned from World War II. Sally's father died when she was 12 years old. Through the pages of this book Sally Dingo will give a voice to the sorrow she and many others still feel, for they were not aware of what their fathers and brothers and husbands (as well as the brave women who were POW nurses) had to go through. She will also tell the story of those forgotten, quiet men. 'What I am trying to pen is, in the end - after all the heartache of the war - really a love letter to a generation. For they were incredible, and inspiring, and we the children did not understand for so long. And soon they will be gone, and we have not said thank you. They sacrificed - then watched as we took all the spoils, in the decades that followed.' Max Butler, Sally's father, was a member of the 2/40th, a battalion of men sacrificed; a battalion one historian called the 'Doomed Battalion'. They were volunteers from the bottom of the world, mostly Tasmanian, some Victorian, almost 900 men; sons, mostly all, of World War I veterans, sons who were never given a fighting chance when they were effectively abandoned on Timor, from the blocks of wood many were given to train with in Australia - courtesy of the unprepared authorities, on the assumption these weighed the same as mortar guns - to the few rifles and old, old Lewis guns; the insufficient submachine guns and precious little ammunition available to them in action; to the Australian military's underestimation of Japanese capabilities and might; to Churchill's determination to chew through the Australian troops, having decided that Australia's first duty lay in the defence, not of Australia, but of Burma - all for Britain. All this together with orders such as those coming from Major General Sydney Howell, 'to put up the best defence possible with the resources you have at your disposal'. These men turned and faced the onslaught. With absolute courage. Timor was the last of the islands to fall to the Japanese. The prisoners they became were spread throughout the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps scattered over the Pacific. Where their real nightmares began. And the fortunate ones came home, three and a half years later. When Max Butler returned to Australia - like most of the 20 000 Australian POWs of the Japanese - he would not, or could not, tell what happened. This will be his story and the story of his fellow soldiers. But it is also the story of wives, and families; Australians far and wide, who comforted, and nursed, and grieved. And resented. And were perplexed. Who yearned. And loved. And somehow - mostly - learned to understand. It is a story of men, unsung and ordinary. Yet they were not. Men to whom Churchill, from his lofty position as a Briton, would have applied his description of the lowest of the Empire's minions, 'down to the humblest farmer in the most distant province', the phrase he used in his maiden speech in the House of Commons. Men whom Australians know to be so much more than that. They are men who deserve our recognition. And our gratitude. Quietly.