Monthly Archives: March 2026

Peter Cochrane’s Tobruk 1941

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Peter Cochrane’s Tobruk 1941 is a lively, readable account of one of the most mythologised episodes in Australian military history. Rather than retelling the siege in the familiar heroic tone, Cochrane approaches it with the instincts of a social historian, more interested in what the campaign meant to the men who fought it and to the nation that later remembered it than in operational detail for its own sake. The result is a book that feels grounded and human, concerned with lived experience as much as with military events.

Often written off as just a picture book because of its strong visual presentation and relatively compact size, it is easy to underestimate what Cochrane is doing here. The photographs and illustrations are not filler but part of the argument. They reinforce the sense of environment, improvisation, and strain that defined the siege. Beneath the visual format sits a carefully constructed interpretation that challenges the simplicity of the Tobruk legend and places the episode within a broader historical and cultural frame.

Cochrane’s central achievement lies in his ability to cut through the mythology of the “Rats of Tobruk” without dismissing the genuine endurance and resilience of the garrison. He explores how the legend was constructed, how it was reported at the time, and how it later became embedded in Australian national identity. By drawing on diaries, letters, and contemporary journalism, he shows how the defenders understood their own situation and how that understanding differed from the heroic narrative that emerged later. The siege appears less as a neat story of defiance and more as a prolonged experience of discomfort, danger, improvisation, and uncertainty.

The book does not ignore the military dimension. Cochrane outlines the strategic importance of Tobruk, the see-saw campaigns across Cyrenaica, and the role of Australian forces within the wider British and Commonwealth war effort. However, he deliberately avoids getting lost in tactical minutiae. Instead he focuses on the rhythms of siege warfare, the strain of constant bombardment, the monotony of defensive routines, and the psychological pressure of isolation. This approach gives the reader a strong sense of what it felt like to be there rather than simply what happened on a map.

One of the strengths of Cochrane’s writing is its clarity. He avoids academic jargon and writes in a straightforward style that keeps the narrative moving. The book is accessible without being simplistic. It balances storytelling with analysis, weaving individual stories into the broader historical argument. This makes it appealing to both general readers and those with a deeper interest in Australian military history. It is also a relatively short work, which helps maintain its pace and keeps the focus tight.

At times, readers looking for a detailed operational history may find the book less satisfying. Cochrane is not attempting a comprehensive battlefield study, and he does not provide the level of tactical reconstruction that some military historians might expect. His interest lies elsewhere, in memory, identity, and experience. For most readers this is a strength rather than a weakness, but it does shape the scope of the book.

Overall, Peter Cochrane has produced a thoughtful and engaging reinterpretation of Tobruk. He respects the endurance of the soldiers without simply repeating the familiar legend, and he places the siege within a wider cultural and historical context. The book works well as both an introduction to the campaign and a reflection on how wartime stories are shaped and remembered. It leaves the reader with a clearer sense not just of what happened at Tobruk in 1941, but of why it has mattered so much in Australian historical memory.

I bought the book for the pictures, The text is concise and as I mentioned above is more about the men than the campaign. For $3.50 at the Op-shop a good buy.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Dare to Dream

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Growing up I was lucky to have two loving parents that provided great guidance. Dad was warm, kind and caring mum was a hard-nosed b#$#h whose harsh upbringing made it hard to show affection except with the showering of gifts which I loved!

Despite this they had one thing in common neither had a single gram of prejudice in their bodies, except for maybe cross-town footy team rivalry. This was unusual with the White Australia Policy, post war migration, and the deep stereotyping of Indigenous Australians. When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 my father sat me down and explained why he was a wonderful man and why he should be a role model. As a result I have always “had a dream”, never standing still and never being happy with the status quo. This book helped to re-kindle those lessons.

Godfrey Hodgson’s Martin Luther King is a slim book, but it carries more weight than its size suggests. It isn’t a sweeping, romantic biography, and it isn’t written in the tone of reverence that sometimes surrounds King. Instead, Hodgson approaches him as a historian of American power and politics. The result is a portrait that feels grounded, occasionally cool, and sometimes deliberately resistant to myth.

Hodgson is best known for writing about American political culture, and that background shapes the book. King is not treated simply as a heroic moral figure, but as a product of a particular America—Cold War America, segregated America, a nation that talked endlessly about freedom while denying it at home. The civil rights struggle is set firmly inside that contradiction. Hodgson keeps circling back to the idea that King’s rise was possible not only because of his brilliance and courage, but because of structural shifts in American politics, media, and global image. In that sense, King is both a transformative leader and someone who emerges at a precise historical moment.

The early chapters sketch King’s upbringing in Atlanta and his intellectual formation with steady, economical prose. Hodgson doesn’t linger in sentimental detail. He’s more interested in what shaped King’s mind—his theological training, his reading of Reinhold Niebuhr, his study of Gandhi, his immersion in the Black church tradition. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is handled as the catalytic moment it was, but Hodgson is careful to show that King did not invent the movement; he stepped into it, and then rose within it. That balance—between individual agency and collective struggle—runs through the whole book.

One of the book’s strengths is how clearly it situates King within the machinery of American politics. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations appear not as moral bystanders but as cautious actors calculating costs and risks. Hodgson shows how federal power was reluctant, reactive, and often cynical, even while ultimately enacting transformative legislation. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are framed as hard-won outcomes of sustained pressure, not inevitable moral awakenings.

Hodgson is also attentive to the fractures within the movement. The tensions between King and more militant activists are not softened. The emergence of Black Power, the impatience with nonviolence, and the sense that integration might not be enough are treated seriously. Hodgson makes it clear that King’s later years were marked by growing isolation. His opposition to the Vietnam War is presented as morally consistent but politically costly. It strained his alliances and complicated his standing with white liberals and parts of the Black leadership.

The final sections, dealing with King’s assassination and legacy, avoid triumphalism. Hodgson is wary of the way America has absorbed King into a safer national story. He hints, sometimes quite directly, that the King celebrated in monuments and public holidays is not quite the same man who condemned American militarism and economic injustice. That tension between radical critique and national commemoration hovers over the book’s closing pages.

Stylistically, Hodgson writes in a clean, restrained way. He doesn’t aim for lyrical flourish. The tone can feel detached at times, especially if you’re used to more intimate or emotionally driven biographies. But that restraint also gives the work credibility. It reads like a historian trying to make sense of a giant figure without surrendering to hagiography.

If there’s a limitation, it’s that the brevity sometimes compresses complexity. King’s inner life, his doubts, his personal struggles, and the emotional texture of the movement don’t receive the depth you’d find in longer biographies. The book works best as a sharp, interpretive overview rather than a definitive life.

In the end, Hodgson’s Martin Luther King feels less like a monument and more like a corrective. It reminds you that King was not just a dreamer on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but a political actor navigating power, backlash, and contradiction. It’s thoughtful, measured, and quietly unsettling in the way it suggests that the America King challenged still exists.

One cannot help but see the parallels with the way the Civil Rights Movement was treated in Luther’s day and the way I.C.E. are treating anti-Trump protesters today, reflecting a troubling trend that undermines the foundations of democratic expression. Many individuals brave enough to voice their dissent or advocate for social change face not only scrutiny but also systemic retaliation, reminiscent of the challenges faced by civil rights activists in the past. Even in Australia, the right to peaceful protest is becoming significantly reduced, as laws increasingly curtail the freedoms that citizens once took for granted. This pattern of suppression raises significant concerns about the state of civil liberties in modern society. If only that dream of unimpeded expression and justice for all came true!

Freedom without justice will never be achieved, as the two concepts are intrinsically linked; true freedom can only flourish in an environment where fairness prevails, where everyone’s rights are protected, and where the rule of law is upheld, ensuring that each individual can live without fear of oppression or discrimination. Without justice, freedom becomes merely an illusion, a hollow promise that is easily undermined by inequality and injustice, leaving society fractured and vulnerable. To realize a world where freedom takes root, we must strive tirelessly to establish a foundation of justice that empowers every voice, validates every struggle, and champions the cause of equity for all.

Thus endeth the rant.

Great book. A must read.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

PS “Strength to Love” by Martin Luther King is also a must have. Although a compilation of sermons even the non church goer should enjoy. The sermon “Be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves” is especially worth a look. King often used this verse (Mathew 10.16) to explain the strategy of non-violent resistance during the Civil Rights Movement. For him, it captured a tension. Wisdom of serpents equating to strategic awareness, intelligence, realism about injustice. Harmlessness of doves to moral integrity, refusal to hate or use violence. He argued that effective social change required both, not just one.

28mm KNIL Overalwagen (2)

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Most of these vehicles were constructed in workshops on Java, particularly around Surabaya and Bandung. They were built on commercial truck chassis, often American makes such as Chevrolet or Ford, which were readily available in the colony.

Armour plate was added in a boxy, riveted or bolted form, creating vehicles that looked more like armoured lorries than purpose-built fighting vehicles. There was no single standard pattern.

Each batch, and sometimes each individual vehicle, differed depending on the truck used and the armour available. Production numbers are unclear, but they appear to have been small—probably only a few dozen in total.

The two Overalwagen completed so far.

This second model is also from Mad Bob Miniatures and will be used in my KNIL East Indies Bolt Action army.

Ford-Marmon-Herrington Half-Ton truck

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The Ford-Marmon-Herrington Half-Ton truck was a wartime adaptation of Ford’s commercial ½-ton chassis, converted by Marmon-Herrington for military and colonial use. These trucks featured all-wheel drive systems developed by Marmon-Herrington, enhancing their off-road capability for operations in remote and rugged environments.

Primarily built for the Netherlands East Indies, the LD6-4 was intended as a light anti-aircraft/light anti-tank gun truck, tasked with protecting emergency landing fields, fuel depots, and ammunition dumps. It was fitted with stabilising jacks.

Offering mobile air defence against low-flying aircraft. Though not a dedicated AA platform, its versatility and availability made it a practical solution during the Japanese advance in the Pacific.

Due to the fall of the Dutch East Indies in early 1942, many of these trucks were diverted to Australia, where they continued service in various roles. Their robust design, reliable drivetrain, and adaptability made them valuable assets in both military and post-war civilian applications.

Another MarDav miniatures model.

Review of Bill the Bastard by Roland Perry

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Roland Perry is the master of writing popular military history, achieving the difficult bond between readability and well researched military history. This makes him one of my favourite authors.

Bill the Bastard is one of those true war stories that sounds too big to be real until you remember that the First World War produced characters like this everywhere. Roland Perry leans hard into the legend, but in this case the legend earns it.

At the centre of the book is Bill, a massive, half-wild Whaler horse considered unmanageable, dangerous, and basically useless for polite military purposes. He bites, kicks, refuses to cooperate, and terrifies anyone who gets too close. Naturally, he ends up with the Australian Light Horse. The match is perfect. What the regular army sees as a problem animal, the Light Horsemen recognise as raw toughness.

The book follows Bill and his rider, Major Michael Shanahan, through training and then into the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Perry writes the desert war well — heat, flies, long patrols, bad water, and the constant grind on men and animals alike. Horses weren’t background equipment in that theatre; they were everything. Without them there was no mobility, no shock action, no campaign. Perry makes that clear without turning the book into a lecture.

Where the story really takes off is in combat. Bill becomes a battlefield monster in the best possible sense — carrying wounded, charging when others baulk, surviving things that should kill a horse several times over. The famous episode where he carries multiple wounded men to safety under fire is told with plenty of pace and a fair bit of pride. Perry is not shy about celebrating Australian grit and improvisation, but he mostly keeps it readable rather than overblown.

The tone is straightforward and very accessible. This isn’t a dense academic history. It sits somewhere between popular history and campfire storytelling. Perry likes a good anecdote and he tells them well. At times he leans into the myth-making — Bill becomes almost super-equine — but given the way soldiers talked about their mounts, that feels appropriate rather than excessive. Light Horse memoirs are full of this kind of affection and exaggeration.

One of the strengths of the book is how it treats the bond between rider and horse. Perry keeps bringing the story back to the practical realities: feeding, watering, grooming, calming a frightened animal in the dark, trusting it in a charge. The relationship isn’t sentimental fluff. It’s survival. When Bill behaves badly, it’s because he’s built to survive. When he saves lives, it’s because that same stubbornness refuses to quit.

If there’s a weakness, it’s that the book occasionally repeats itself and sometimes drifts into general background that slows the pace. Perry also writes with a strong admiration for his subject and for the Light Horse in general, so readers looking for critical distance won’t really find it here. But that’s not the point of the book. It’s meant to celebrate a remarkable animal and the men who rode with him, and it does that very effectively.

Overall, it’s a solid, enjoyable piece of popular military history. Easy to read, full of character, and a good reminder that war stories aren’t always about generals and plans. Sometimes they’re about a difficult horse who turned out to be tougher than anyone expected and ended up carrying a small legend on his back.

I reaaly enjoyed this great read.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

28mm KNIL Overalwagen (1)

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The KNIL Overvalwagen was an improvised armoured car built in the Dutch East Indies before and during the early stages of the Second World War. The name roughly translates as “assault vehicle,” and that is essentially what it was meant to be: a locally built, mobile protected truck that could support colonial troops in patrols, raids, and emergency defence.

The Royal Netherlands East Indies Army had very few modern armoured vehicles available, so workshops in Java began converting commercial truck chassis into armoured cars using locally available materials and weapons.

Most Overvalwagens were built on American truck bases, often Chevrolet, with armour plate added to create a tall, boxy hull. Protection was basic but adequate against rifle fire and fragments. The vehicles varied from one another because they were produced in small numbers and modified according to what parts and weapons were on hand.

Some carried multiple machine guns mounted in the front and sides, while others mounted heavier weapons such as a light cannon. Crews usually consisted of three to five men, and visibility and comfort were secondary to simply getting a protected vehicle onto the road.

These vehicles were intended primarily for internal security across the vast territories of the Dutch East Indies, where mobility and presence mattered as much as firepower. They patrolled roads, escorted convoys, and provided a visible show of force in remote areas.

When Japan invaded in late 1941 and early 1942, the Overvalwagens were pressed into frontline service, defending airfields, towns, and key routes. Against lightly equipped infantry they could be effective, but they were never designed to fight modern tanks. Their thin armour, high profile, and limited off-road performance made them vulnerable once Japanese armoured units and anti-tank weapons appeared.

In the short and chaotic campaign that followed, the Overvalwagens became part of the improvised defensive effort mounted by the KNIL across Java and other islands. Some fought brief delaying actions or supported local counterattacks, but most were eventually destroyed, abandoned, or captured as Dutch resistance collapsed.

They remain an example of the pragmatic, make-do approach of the colonial forces: not elegant or standardised machines, but practical vehicles built quickly in an attempt to give the KNIL at least some mobile firepower in a rapidly worsening situation.

This first model from Mad Bob Miniatures is for use in my my KNIL East Indies Bolt Action army.

More titles released

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After nearly a decade of working on a whole lot of rule and book projects I am pleased to see that many of them are being or are near completion. Today I can announce that the following two books are now out in the marketplace.

This is a novel about a small section of soldiers as they weave their way through their many adventures. The first book is one of a planned series of six books. The back page blurb describes it best:

From the training camps of Australia to the dust and fire of North Africa, Hennessy of the A.I.F. follows one ordinary section of Australian soldiers as they are drawn into the first great campaigns of the Second World War.

Corporal Jack Hennessy is not a hero in search of glory. He is a fitter by trade, a quiet leader by necessity, and a man who understands that survival depends less on courage than on reliability. Around him gathers a section of volunteers—larrikins, labourers, boys barely grown, and veterans already marked by war. Together they are carried from the familiar rhythms of home to the uncertainty of desert warfare, where heat, exhaustion, and fear test them long before the enemy does.

As the campaign unfolds, the men of the section learn that war is rarely the clean, decisive struggle imagined from afar. It is confusion, endurance, and the steady dependence on those beside you. Through humour, hardship, and the unspoken bonds of mateship, they move from eager volunteers to seasoned soldiers confronting the reality of combat and the cost it demands.

Blending historical context with vivid storytelling, Hennessy of the A.I.F. is a tribute to the ordinary Australians who crossed the world to fight in unfamiliar lands—and to the quiet professionalism, resilience, and loyalty that carried them forward when certainty disappeared.

The novel, although totally fictional is bedded deeply in the real-life historical events. The events the characters are involved did happen, although without the embellishment of the genre.

The second book is part of a planned series on Australian small and lesser known actions of World War 2, One of these Operation whiting is already in print.

In April 1945, as the Pacific War staggered toward its end, a small group of Australian soldiers slipped into Japanese-held territory in the Netherlands East Indies. Their mission was not to seize ground or destroy an enemy force, but to prevent a catastrophe that had not yet occurred: the execution or coercion of the Sultan of Ternate, a figure whose survival could shape the fragile transition from occupation to post-war order.

Operation Opossum tells the story of that mission—and explains why it mattered.

Drawing on Australian War Memorial archives, contemporary reporting, and post-war operational reconstructions, this book reveals how late-war Australian strategy increasingly prioritised legitimacy, restraint, and political effect over battlefield dominance. It shows how a raid involving only a handful of men, conducted far from the main theatres of decision, carried consequences that extended well beyond a single island.

More than a narrative of a daring extraction, this is a study of how wars end. It explores the collapse of Japanese authority, the uncertainties of decolonisation, and the emergence of stabilisation operations designed to prevent violence rather than unleash it. In doing so, it challenges conventional measures of military success and highlights the strategic importance of actions whose greatest achievement was that nothing happened.

Both of these are available on Amazon. Seem my Publications Page.