Expendable Soldiers

John Knight and his colleagues, who are part-time Australian Army soldiers, have escaped the Japanese once. Now they must continue to chance their arm as they setup a coast watcher network. The Coastwatchers will report on the Japanese from the islands of New Guinea. It's more than the Coastwatchers and the army who are under threat from the Japanese. There are many civilians in the New Guinea region who will soon be within the clutches of the advancing Japanese army. No one could have imagined the speed and efficiency of the Japanese army or their capacity to inflict cruelty on the innocent. They are not playing by the gentleman's rules of war. John knows there is no sense regretting his decision to join the part-time army. No one knew that the Japanese would attack New Guinea in 1942. It was just bad luck that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Australian Army is not prepared for the Japanese and considers John and his colleagues expendable, as they undertake their important mission. The group is using a stolen Japanese gunboat to deceive the Japanese but now they must fight their enemy on land and sea. The Coastwatchers on the islands around New Guinea are depending on John's group for their lives. John's group of part-time soldiers know they must quickly become better soldiers and have the luck of the Irish, if they are to survive the war.

Expendable Soldiers 3 – Counterpunch

Lt John Knight returns to the New Guinea frontline. He now leads small teams of special forces soldiers, who operate behind the lines, in the fight against the Japanese. The war has turned for the Japanese with Allied forces slowly pushing them back. But they are hanging on and are not a spent force.

Nothing has changed. It is still a fight to the death.

But now the allies, including John’s team, know how to fight the Japanese in the jungles of the Pacific. The Allies are no longer the pushover that they were at the beginning of the war.

John and his team are always on their own, and a long way from help, when they take on the Japanese. John continues to rely on cunning battle tactics and ferocious gunfights to ensure his team is punching above their weight. But will this be enough to overcome superior Japanese forces?

This is the third and final book in the highly popular Expendable Soldiers series.

Fleeting Images from a Bloodied Past

Ships against the sea! Was…STILL IS, a threat to all the vessels who sail upon her, and especially so, an ever-present threat to the crews who do their duty and put their lives in harm's way. Of violent storms, tempests… All the unpredictable hell of crosswinds, headwinds and tailwinds, roaring madly like some frenzied monster, changing direction, attempting to plunge the man-made object under the vengeful, towering and swamping thunderous waves, against which so many hardy ships have foundered, perished and been lost. The fact that the CSS Alabama came through such a storm and survived this maelstrom is testimony to the meticulous skills and concentrated painstaking patience and hard work of Laird's well-led and well-managed shipbuilding workforce and professional seamanship, that ensured the crew's safe passage and escape from this seaborne wretchedness. Warships, which survived incredible battle experience, and - at war's end - were reviewed for conversion, replacement or the breaker's yard was a consideration. Not all, however, because the fate of HMS Zealous continued in a new page of history, when she was transferred to the Israeli Navy. Later, in 1967, whilst out on patrol in the Eastern Mediterranean, she was suddenly attacked by Egyptian warships equipped with superior firepower. The new crew of this old warhorse knew that the fate of their emerging and vibrant new nation, fighting to retain her hard-fought existence, was dependent upon their spirited defence. Despite the fact that they were up against Soviet-supplied STYX surface-to-surface missiles, against which they had no defence, they steered into battle, undaunted. With battle pennants flying, they bravely challenged the enemy. Their fearlessness and courage shone in the face of certain destruction and ultimate sacrifice. The Cammell Laird scenario is riveting and strikingly dramatic…

Holes in the Ground: War and Ore

When Thomas Longois Lefoy is sent to Tangiers to investigate a German plot involving Moroccan phosphates, he uncovers a sinister Soviet Union involvement in the Asturias miners’ strike of 1934 and its unforeseen consequences for Andoni Arriola, a Basque metallurgist. As he delves deeper into the case, he finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the Spanish Civil War, the injury and death of British intelligence agents, and the protection of Britain’s interests in the iron and copper mining industries. As he travels from Tangiers to Gibraltar, Huelva, and Bilbao, he witnesses the devastating effects of civil war and the destruction of open-cast mining. Along the way, he encounters Heinrich Rathenau, a German industrial chemist seeking refuge, and becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of espionage and political maneuvering that reveals the high stakes of international trade and the human cost of war.

Intuition Prevails

American, British, and other fighter pilots operate at the threshold of Artificial Intelligence (AI). They know that their lives depend not only on their skills, but equally on ‘intuition’. This is reinforced when cyber-attacks ‘high jack’ command-and-control systems. To date, the best pilots are superior to AI in tests, including in-flight combat simulations and field test. It is accepted that within a decade, AI will evolve from assisting pilots to replacing them. Meanwhile, pilots of USAF, USN, and the RAF are stretched as the conflicts across the globe draw them into danger. For the first time in history, USAF pilots and their families are threatened in the US. Exciting times!

Letters to Doberitz

This unique and compelling story has laid dormant for a 100 years. Inspired by real events and based on my own family during the First World War, Letters to Doberitz is set between a German prison-of-war camp, the battlefields of France and family back in Bristol, as father and son endure very different wars. These were real people. They are my ancestors and family who left an extraordinary tale to be told. A lie is made in the name of love, with letters written compounding the deceit for years, all to protect the man that they loved. This is their truly unique story.

Let’s Go Sit Under the Mango Tree

Singapore in 1942 saw the greatest defeat of the British and Allied forces of WW2. Much has been written about the terrible time endured by the 85,000 troops who surrendered to the Japanese forces on 15 February 1942. Much less has been written about the circumstances surrounding the many civilians caught up in the fighting and subsequently interned or forced to endure occupation.

Such was the speed with which the Japanese captured the Island that little time was given to removing resources that may assist them in furthering their aim of creating an Asian empire. One example is the fact that the island had become the centre for all the gold reserves of the Malay States and Singapore. The Japanese knew this and for nearly four years searched the island for the gold. To this day some of this gold may still be at large as no one ever kept a record of what gold was on the island and how much was consumed in paying the cost of the subsequent guerrilla warfare.

Liverpool Kids of WWII - Part 1

The Liverpool Blitz is over…

The seven-year-old boy who was evacuated in The Green Gates Story, comes home after many months away, and is faced with changes to his life: house moves, new districts, new faces…

No sweets, because Mum’s used the coupons for sugar.
What are bananas?
What’s ice-cream?
White bread?

Upon his return to his home city and with his evacuation experience behind him, he views his life ahead as a series of hurdles, but the War is ongoing…

Toys? – Pretend games and a good healthy imagination.
Free-time? – Fun of collecting waste paper, scrap metal, bones and rags, in support of the war effort.

His first trip into town, shopping with Mum, and the surprising sight of big blackened shells, once shops, now dark spaces between buildings, which had suffered direct hits, torn apart innards and burnt deposits.  
Blast waves obliterating shop windows and doors of adjacent buildings, displaying:
Heaps of broken bricks
Shattered concrete supports
Splintered wood floors hanging drunkenly, with massive heaps of dust and debris deposited on the piled remains, awaiting attention and clearance.

How to cope with the unnecessary death of a classmate, killed at play, after accidentally falling through the blitzed roof of an unsafe bomb-damaged house?

When the supply and demands of shortages cause the theft of a family bicycle.

Kids discovering the incomprehensible: German POWs sitting smoking, chatting and laughing, employed in collecting and stacking usable bricks from a bomb site, watched by a grey-haired bespectacled British soldier sat in his parked army lorry when he was not reading a dog-eared copy of Lilliput magazine.  
Same kids, frowning and mindful of captured British soldiers packed into overcrowded huts inside barbed-wire enclosures, overlooked by machine-gun towers, in the Fatherland!

Liverpool Kids of WWII, Part 2

The boy was growing into youth – not yet a teenager – but was bright enough to know his country was in a war that it mustn’t lose, that his brother and uncles were also part of this deadly struggle…

Melodious harmonies and helmets were heard and seen at the impromptu Christmas party his mum and dad had arranged. He was as inquisitive as could be because it sounded like the Americans had arrived with Uncle Jim for the little house party he’d eavesdropped about over the last few days.

“Gosh a’mighty!” he heard one over-the-pond voice exclaim. “You got gas lighting but no electricity in the house, huh?”

The front room was alive with noise generated by adults, both seated and standing, in a happy conversation. Already, a smoky fuzz was forming from lit cigarettes, held firmly between thumbs and forefingers and used sometimes to emphasise a point or two in the friendly interchange of chit-chat.

The first thing he noticed was one policeman’s helmet and two American army white military police garrison caps grouped together at one end of his mum’s upright piano top. Railway policeman, Uncle Jim was in boisterous good humour with the two Americans.

Suddenly, his young eyes lit up as he spied a crumpled untidy mess of military equipment in the corner of the room, which drew him onto it immediately. He could see a US army belt with what looked like a brown wood baseball bat attached, as well as a set of handcuffs.

Lysette

Nine year old French girl Lysette is thrown into the chaos of war when she runs for her life from a bomb dropped on her neighbourhood in Aachen, Germany.  Travelling through the Netherlands, then a long trek through Belgium, she arrives in the town of Sedan in northern France where she is taken into a monastery. There, she is sheltered from the horrors of war. But outside, the war rages on.

Local resistance groups fight Gestapo soldiers, and secret messages are sent across northern Europe and Belgium Closer to home, the Gestapo are searching for ‘the girl in the blue uniform’ after Lysette had witnessed a murder whilst in the Netherlands. The reality of war is contrasted with the calmness of the monastery. Will Lysette ever see her parents again?

Madam Josefina's Social House

Buenos Aires, 1904. A burgeoning city with a political class dominated by ruthless businessmen, a middle class harbouring disenchanted revolutionaries, and hundreds of thousands of working migrants, amongst whom anarchist ideologies are taking hold.

Commissioner De La Fuente leads the Detective Division of the Police of the Capital. He’s got a strategy to rid the country of radicalized anarchists before their bombs start exploding, and to quell yet another bloody insurrection. He’s also ambitious, willing to do whatever it takes to obtain the exalted position of Chief of Police. He owns Madam Josefina’s Social House, a brothel, taking advantage of the indiscretions of the powerful to gain their support, through blackmail if necessary.

Enter Sofia Montserrat, taking on the job of bookkeeper. She’s an idealistic aristocrat with a secret, writing social critiques for underground newspapers in her spare time. While hiding out from the Spanish authorities she discovers a deadly plot conceived by rogue elements of the police force. She could just let it run its course, but her conscience won’t allow it, and her decisions will have grave repercussions for herself and those she loves.

Madam Josefina’s Social House is a historical thriller, which takes the reader from the sweeping landscapes and enduring poverty of Spain’s rural south to the tenements of metropolitan Buenos Aires. And an inconspicuous brothel, a place of erotic passion and Tango, a place where destinies collide.

Metamorphoses

“Returning to a rejuvenated South Australian infantry battalion, after having been severely injured at Gallipoli, newly promoted Sergeant Major William Berenger finds himself in the sleepy village of Albert on the Somme on the eve of a massive Australian assault at Pozières. Having married Juliana, whom Berenger had first met 15 years earlier as a Boer prisoner in the South African war, Berenger is called again to the colours, despite the impending birth of their first child.

A young British soldier, Private Reginald Atkins from the Ox and Bucks finds himself trapped in a shell hole in front of the Australian trenches. He is soon joined by an injured Australian, Private Lachlan Watts trying to make his way back to his battalion. Subsequently, both Watts and Atkins are tried for cowardice: the Australian soldier being found Not Guilty, whilst the British soldier is unjustly executed.

Whilst on a night reconnaissance mission in No Man’s Land, Berenger encounters a German soldier from the Bavarian 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment, whom he severely injures but does not kill. Removing this soldier’s identity tags, he discovers upon slithering back to Australian lines, the soldier’s identity as hitherto anonymous aspiring artist, Adolf Hitler.

Berenger discovers that the Germans have been attempting to tunnel under Albert in an attempt to blow-up the Australian lines. Pozières must be taken before the Germans thwart the Allies’ imminent assault.”