The Congregation continues to grow around its supernatural core, but most of those answering the call of the Baptiste brothers remain ordinary men and women who rely upon gunpowder rather than Arcane Power. The musketmen and riflemen provide fire from a distance, while others prefer the mobility and simplicity of a pistol when fighting through settlements, woodland and the tangled country of the Louisiana bayou.

The next two additions to my Congregation posse are both Creole gunmen, each armed with a pistol. Neither possesses any supernatural abilities, although both have spent enough time around Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste to understand that there are occasions when the sensible response to something inexplicable is not to ask questions, but to draw a weapon.

Théodore Moreau

Théodore Moreau grew up around the docks and warehouses of New Orleans before returning to his mother’s family in the bayou. He worked wherever employment could be found, including as a deckhand, warehouse guard and occasional escort for merchants carrying valuable cargo along the river. These occupations taught him to recognise trouble quickly and convinced him that a pistol carried beneath a coat was considerably more useful in close quarters than the finest rifle left leaning against a wall.

Théodore first encountered the Congregation when men associated with the Dark Confederacy attempted to seize a shipment of supplies destined for several isolated communities. He helped drive them off and subsequently discovered that the cargo itself had merely been bait intended to draw out those resisting Confederate influence. Rather than withdraw once the danger became apparent, Théodore joined the Congregation in tracking the attackers back to their camp.

He has remained with them ever since. Théodore possesses a dry sense of humour and an impressive ability to remain calm when confronted by the supernatural, although he insists this has nothing to do with courage. After travelling with two Vessels, two Houngan, several Arcanists, Zombies and an enormous Temple Snake, he maintains that his understanding of what constitutes normal has simply deteriorated.

Sébastien Robichaux

Sébastien Robichaux was raised in one of the smaller Creole communities beyond New Orleans, where his family operated a modest store serving fishermen, hunters and passing river traffic. He became accustomed to dealing with strangers and learned early that a friendly manner and careful attention could reveal considerably more than threats. When necessary, however, the pistol kept beneath the counter provided a more direct method of settling disagreements.

His family became involved in the Congregation’s struggle after Dark Confederacy agents began purchasing unusual quantities of supplies while asking questions about local cemeteries and abandoned settlements. Sébastien followed them, discovered enough to understand their purpose and carried the information to Auguste Delacroix. The resulting confrontation destroyed a small Confederate operation and convinced Sébastien that remaining behind his counter while others fought was no longer sufficient.

Sébastien now serves as one of the Congregation’s scouts and close range gunmen. He is sociable, observant and particularly useful when the posse needs information without announcing its presence. He also possesses the useful habit of keeping his pistol loaded even during supposedly friendly conversations, something experience with the Dark Confederacy has repeatedly demonstrated to be sensible.

Théodore Moreau and Sébastien Robichaux bring another pair of ordinary Creole fighters into the Congregation, complementing the musketmen and riflemen already gathered around the Baptiste brothers. They have no desire to become Houngan or Arcanists and are perfectly content to leave dealings with the Loa to those better qualified.

When the spirits speak, they listen.

When the shooting starts, they have a rather more immediate contribution to make.

All six Congregation Gunfighters

The Congregation may draw much of its strength from the Loa, but supernatural power alone will not stop every enemy that comes through the Louisiana bayou. Alongside its Vessels, Houngan and Arcanists are ordinary men carrying considerably more conventional weapons, and among the most useful are those who know how to put a rifle bullet precisely where it is needed.

Two more such men have now joined my Congregation posse. Unlike the musketmen Étienne LeBlanc and Lucien Savoy, these two carry more modern rifles and prefer to engage their enemies from a sensible distance. Both are Louisiana Creoles who learned to shoot long before the Dark Confederacy gave them something particularly unpleasant to shoot at.

Antoine Beauchamp

Antoine Beauchamp grew up in a small settlement on the edge of the bayou, where hunting was less a recreation than part of keeping a family fed. His father taught him that ammunition was too expensive to waste and that a hunter who regularly required a second shot had either chosen the wrong position or fired too quickly. Antoine absorbed both lessons and developed into a patient marksman who preferred waiting several minutes for the right shot rather than taking several poor ones.

He joined the Congregation after guiding Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste through country being used by Dark Confederacy agents. What began as a single night’s work became several days of tracking, followed by a short and violent encounter in which Antoine discovered that the men he had been following were accompanied by something that had already been dead for several months. He remained with the Congregation afterwards, reasoning that once a man has discovered walking corpses in his hunting country, pretending they are somebody else’s problem becomes rather difficult.

Antoine is quiet even by the standards of the Congregation and rarely contributes to arguments concerning the intentions of the Loa. He respects the spirits and those who understand them, but his own approach to the supernatural remains practical. If Étienne tells him that something cannot be killed by an ordinary bullet, Antoine listens carefully. If nobody says otherwise, he assumes that an ordinary bullet is worth trying.

Jacques Dufresne

Jacques Dufresne came from a Creole family of river traders and spent much of his youth travelling between New Orleans and settlements scattered along the waterways of southern Louisiana. He became an accomplished rifleman while protecting boats and cargoes from thieves, deserters and others who occasionally mistook an isolated vessel for an easy opportunity. Jacques learned to shoot from moving boats, unstable riverbanks and the decks of small trading vessels, developing a reputation for remaining remarkably calm when everyone around him was doing precisely the opposite.

His first encounter with the Dark Confederacy came when a trading boat disappeared along with its crew and cargo. Jacques followed the trail inland and discovered that several of the dead crewmen had subsequently been raised to guard a temporary Confederate encampment. He returned with members of the Congregation, helped destroy those responsible and ensured that the unfortunate crewmen were finally allowed to remain dead. He joined the posse shortly afterwards.

Jacques has since become one of the Congregation’s more dependable riflemen, particularly when the Baptiste brothers lead the posse beyond the familiar waterways of Louisiana. He possesses little interest in mastering supernatural power himself, although repeated experience has taught him never to dismiss anything merely because it sounds impossible. In the company he now keeps, impossible things have an unfortunate habit of appearing just after sunset.

Antoine Beauchamp and Jacques Dufresne add another pair of ordinary fighting men to the Congregation, providing accurate rifle fire while the Vessels, Houngan and Arcanists deal with matters better left to those who understand the spirit world. Neither man possesses supernatural powers, but both know precisely why they have chosen to fight.

The Loa may decide where the Congregation needs to go.

Antoine and Jacques prefer to make certain that whatever is waiting there keeps its head down.

Not everyone who follows the Congregation speaks with the Loa, practises Voodoo ceremonies or understands the increasingly complicated discussions between the Houngan and Arcanists. Some are ordinary men who have seen what the Dark Confederacy is doing to the Free South and have decided that something needs to be done about it. They bring whatever skills and weapons they possess, which in the Louisiana bayou often means an old firearm that has already served several generations of the same family.

Two such men have now joined my Congregation posse. Both carry muskets that might appear thoroughly outdated beside modern rifles and revolvers, but neither man sees much reason to replace a weapon that has already proved capable of killing people who needed killing.

Étienne LeBlanc

Étienne LeBlanc comes from a Creole family that had lived beside the waterways of southern Louisiana for generations. He worked as a fisherman, hunter and occasional boatman, learning the hidden channels of the bayou from his father and grandfather. The musket he carries belonged to his grandfather and was already old when Étienne inherited it. Its stock bears repairs made by three generations of LeBlancs, while Étienne maintains the weapon with considerably greater care than he gives most of his other possessions.

He became involved with the Congregation after Dark Confederacy agents entered a neighbouring settlement searching for information about an old burial ground. Étienne helped guide several families through the swamp while armed men searched their homes, then returned with his musket and joined those harassing the intruders from the waterways. He subsequently followed the Baptiste brothers out of Bayou Noir, believing that defending his own community meant little if the same enemy remained free to destroy the next one.

Étienne possesses no supernatural powers and claims no special relationship with the Loa, although he treats them with the respect expected of someone raised among the traditions of the bayou. When asked whether an old musket is really adequate against Zombies, necromancers and the other horrors encountered by the Congregation, he points out that nobody he has shot with it has yet complained about the weapon being obsolete.

Lucien Savoy

Lucien Savoy was raised among hunters and trappers further inland, where his family supplemented an uncertain income by guiding strangers who had enough money and insufficient sense to venture into the swamps. Lucien became an excellent marksman because ammunition cost money and missing meant going hungry. His musket was acquired by his father many years earlier and has been modified, repaired and patched so often that Lucien suspects very little of the original weapon remains beyond the barrel and lock.

His reason for joining the Congregation is more personal. Lucien’s younger cousin disappeared while travelling between settlements and was later discovered among several bodies being transported by agents working for the Dark Confederacy. The intention was apparently to provide fresh corpses for a necromancer operating further north. Lucien recovered his cousin and saw him properly buried, but the experience left him with a particular hatred for those who treat human remains as raw material for their magic.

Lucien consequently needs little encouragement when the Congregation receives word of Dark Confederacy activity. He is quiet, patient and entirely content to leave discussions about the intentions of the Loa to people better qualified to understand them. His own contribution is considerably simpler. He loads his musket, finds somewhere with a good field of fire and waits.

Étienne LeBlanc and Lucien Savoy give the Congregation two more ordinary men standing among some decidedly extraordinary companions. Neither is a Vessel, Houngan or Arcanist, and neither expects the Loa to solve every problem placed before them. They represent the people the Congregation ultimately exists to protect, but they have no intention of standing aside while others do the protecting.

The Loa may provide the supernatural power behind the Congregation, but sometimes an old musket loaded by somebody who knows how to use it remains a perfectly acceptable alternative.

The Congregation’s campaign rules allow fallen members to return as Zombies, which gives plenty of opportunity for characters to develop their own stories before the Loa decide that death is not quite the end of their service. A one off game presents a slightly different situation. Zombies can be purchased as part of the initial posse, which means they are already dead when the story begins and are not replacing established characters whose deaths have occurred during a campaign.

I have painted two more male Zombies specifically with these one off games in mind. Rather than treating them as anonymous walking corpses, I have named both and given them histories explaining who they were, how they died and, most importantly, why the Loa decided to send them back.

Isaiah Broussard

Isaiah Broussard had been a hunter, trapper and boatman in the lower Louisiana bayou, earning his living in country where a man could disappear twenty yards from a travelled waterway and never be found again. He knew hidden channels, abandoned settlements and stretches of swamp avoided even by people who had lived there all their lives. When agents of the Dark Confederacy began moving through the bayou searching for isolated burial grounds, Isaiah became one of the men guiding local resistance against them.

He died defending a small cemetery from Confederate grave robbers, holding a narrow approach while several families removed sacred objects before they could be seized. When the survivors returned the following morning, Isaiah was exactly where they had left him, except that he was standing. His wounds remained clearly visible and there could be no question that the man had died, yet something had returned him to his body. Isaiah subsequently sought out the Congregation, reasoning that if the Loa had refused to let him rest after fighting the Dark Confederacy, they probably expected him to continue doing it.

Isaiah rarely speaks about death and refuses to describe whatever he experienced beyond it. He simply says that he was travelling somewhere when a voice told him he had taken the wrong road. Since joining the Congregation he has continued much as he did before, carrying his weapons, watching the waterways and displaying the disturbing patience of a man who has already discovered that eventually everyone has to come to him.

René Landry

René Landry followed a considerably less respectable path into the service of the Loa. In life he had been a riverboat hand, gambler, smuggler and occasional thief who knew most of the questionable establishments between New Orleans and the settlements further upriver. He was charming when circumstances required it, dishonest when opportunity presented itself and remarkably philosophical about the distinction between his possessions and those temporarily belonging to somebody else.

His involvement with the Dark Confederacy began when he discovered that one of his former smuggling partners had entered a considerably more unpleasant trade. Coffins, bodies and objects stolen from burial grounds were being moved through the same clandestine routes once used for ordinary contraband. René may have possessed a flexible attitude towards property, but stealing from the dead crossed a line even he recognised. He passed information to local Voodoo practitioners and was murdered shortly afterwards by men employed to silence him.

René was buried in an unmarked grave beside the river. Three nights later he dug himself out, recovered his hat from the man who had killed him and eventually found his way to the Congregation. Gabriel Fontenot claims to have known René before his death and insists that becoming a Zombie has improved his character considerably. René disagrees, maintaining that death has merely made him more difficult to cheat.

For a one off game, Isaiah Broussard and René Landry give my Congregation two ready made Zombies who already have a reason to be travelling with the posse. They are not replacement characters created through campaign casualties, but established members whose deaths and returns happened before the game begins.

The Loa have already called both men back once. Neither seems particularly interested in discovering whether they will do it again.

The final photograph brings all four of my Congregation Zombies together, even though no more than two can be included in the posse at any one time. It is a suitably unhealthy looking little gathering and provides enough choice for one off games while leaving plenty of room for the Loa to decide who gets another chance to die.

Most accounts of Australia in the Second World War are understandably dominated by the major campaigns. Singapore, Kokoda, Milne Bay, Buna, the fighting in New Guinea and the final campaigns of 1945 provide a familiar framework for understanding Australia’s war against Japan.

There was, however, another war taking place beyond these conventional battlefields.

It was fought by small groups of men operating in occupied territory, by coastwatchers reporting Japanese movements from isolated islands, by intelligence parties inserted from submarines and small boats, and by independent companies attempting to survive after the conventional front had moved past them. Just as importantly, it depended upon local people who provided information, food, shelter, transport and knowledge of country that Australians could never have acquired for themselves.

That is the subject of my new book, War Among the People: Australian Small Unit Warfare in the Second World War, 1941–1945.

The idea for the book developed from something that had increasingly interested me while researching Australian operations in the Pacific. We often describe these activities individually. There are histories of the coastwatchers, accounts of the independent companies, books about Z Special Unit and studies of particular clandestine operations. What interested me was what happened when they were considered together.

A pattern began to emerge.

These operations were conducted across an enormous geographical area and under very different circumstances, but the same problems appeared repeatedly. Small groups had to survive beyond the conventional battlefield. They needed reliable intelligence, communications with distant headquarters and some means of moving through territory occupied by the Japanese. Above all, they needed people who knew the country.

This last point became increasingly important as I worked on the book.

The popular image of clandestine warfare tends to concentrate upon the operative. A few men land secretly on an enemy occupied coast, disappear into the jungle and somehow continue operating until they are extracted. It makes for a compelling story, but it can also obscure much of what actually made such operations possible.

Behind many of those Australians stood networks of local people.

They were guides, carriers, messengers, scouts and sources of intelligence. Some provided food or shelter. Others watched Japanese movements or carried information across country that Australian operatives barely understood. On Timor, the relationship between Australian troops and their Timorese supporters became fundamental to survival. Similar patterns appeared elsewhere across the South West Pacific.

The risks were not shared equally. An Australian operative might eventually be evacuated. The people who had assisted him remained behind.

That uncomfortable reality is one reason I settled upon the title War Among the People. The hidden war was not conducted across an empty landscape. It took place within communities already attempting to survive occupation, violence and uncertainty.

The book begins with the rapid Japanese advance of 1941 and 1942, when many of Australia’s assumptions about how a Pacific war would be fought collapsed with remarkable speed. From there it looks at the organisations that emerged to conduct intelligence and clandestine operations, the role of civilian and Indigenous networks, and the coastwatching system that stretched across the islands to Australia’s north.

The second half moves into particular operations.

Some will be familiar to readers interested in Australian special operations, while others are considerably less well known. Operation Copper, the disastrous reconnaissance of Muschu Island in April 1945, is particularly revealing because courage could not overcome weaknesses in intelligence, communications and extraction planning. Python and Platypus show how clandestine operations developed in Borneo as Allied forces moved closer to returning in strength. Operation Lizard demonstrates the dangers created when an intelligence network became compromised, while Operation Hornbill is interesting for almost the opposite reason. It was an ambitious operation that was planned but never carried out.

I deliberately wanted to include failure and abandonment alongside successful operations. Special operations history can too easily become a succession of daring missions in which audacity is treated as evidence of military value. The historical record is considerably more complicated. Some operations succeeded. Some achieved only part of what was intended. Others failed badly, and occasionally the most sensible military decision was not to undertake the operation at all.

Nor do I argue that Australia suddenly developed a formal or uniquely Australian doctrine of irregular warfare. Much was inherited from British experience, much was improvised, and different organisations sometimes approached similar problems in different ways.

Nevertheless, when these experiences are placed beside one another, certain recurring practices become difficult to ignore: small groups, decentralised initiative, wireless communication, intelligence, mobility, concealment, local knowledge, human relationships and, perhaps surprisingly, restraint. A patrol that avoided a Japanese position and transmitted useful information could achieve more than one that attacked the enemy and revealed its presence.

That is really what War Among the People is about.

It is not an attempt to replace the familiar history of Australia’s Pacific War. The conventional campaigns remain central to that story. Instead, the book looks into the spaces between those campaigns and at the people operating there, sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the nearest Australian formation.

Some carried rifles. Some carried radios. Others carried messages, food or knowledge.

Together they fought a war in which information could matter more than firepower, survival could itself become an operational achievement, and the people living within the battlefield were often as important as the soldiers sent into it.

War Among the People: Australian Small Unit Warfare in the Second World War, 1941–1945 is my attempt to tell that part of the story.

The book is available on Amazon and Kindle/Kindle unlimited.

There are three more books at the final editing stage and I hope these will be out before the end of the year. They are Operation Hackney about the Campaign on Goodenough Island, Operation Sparrow about the failed defence of Timor and Ambon, and the story of the SS Stikine, a Liberty Ship which exploded in Bombay harbour in WW2. It is good when a couple of years of hard work finally comes together. This time all at once!

There is a certain irony in the Congregation dedicating itself to opposing the necromancy of the Dark Confederacy while occasionally marching into battle accompanied by Zombies of its own. To an outsider there may appear to be little difference between the walking dead serving Lucien Saint Clair and those fighting beside Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste. To the Congregation, however, the distinction could hardly be greater. The Dark Confederacy drags the dead back and binds them to mortal ambition. The Congregation believes that sometimes the Loa simply decide that one of their followers has not finished yet.

When a member of the Congregation falls, therefore, death does not necessarily end their service. Any deceased posse member who was neither supernatural nor a Hired Gun may immediately return as a Zombie, provided there are no more than two Congregation Zombies in the posse at any one time. The fallen fighter rises carrying the marks of both life and death, still recognisably the person who fought beside the Congregation only moments before, but now possessing the unnatural resilience of something that has crossed the boundary and been sent back.

The returned fighter retains everything that made them an individual before death. Their Rank, Rank Skills, Injuries, Arcane Powers, weapons and other Gear remain with them, reflecting the fact that this is not some anonymous corpse raised to fill the ranks. It is the same member of the Congregation continuing the struggle in a very different condition. The newly risen Zombie also gains the Lead Belly and Tough Skills, making an already experienced member considerably more difficult to put down for a second time.

There is a price for returning. A Zombie can no longer earn Experience or Advances. Whatever knowledge, abilities and scars the fighter possessed at the moment of death are effectively frozen. The Loa have returned the individual to complete unfinished business, not granted another mortal lifetime in which to grow and prosper. The Zombie may continue fighting alongside old companions for as long as required, but everyone within the Congregation understands that this second existence is borrowed time.

This also explains why the Congregation sees no contradiction between its own Zombies and its determination to destroy the undead servants of the Dark Confederacy. Lucien Saint Clair raises corpses because he refuses to relinquish control. The Congregation does not command its fallen members back into their bodies. Their return is understood as an act of the Loa, and the returned dead remain members of the Congregation rather than property belonging to whoever performed a ritual.

There is also something wonderfully grim about this on the tabletop. A favourite character might finally succumb after surviving numerous battles, accumulating injuries, equipment and hard won abilities, only to stand up again with Lead Belly and Tough and continue exactly where he or she left off. There can never be more than two such returned members travelling with the posse, which makes each one a recognisable character rather than simply another disposable Zombie.

For Étienne Baptiste, the return of a fallen companion is something to be respected rather than celebrated. Mathieu is rather more inclined to greet an old friend returning from the dead with a smile and a comment that they have looked better.

Either way, the message from the Loa is clear.

You can rest when the work is finished.

There is no shortage of books about 1945. Most understandably concentrate upon the destruction of Nazi Germany, the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the atomic bombs, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and the eventual Japanese surrender. Phil Craig takes a rather different approach in 1945: The Reckoning. His concern is less with how the Second World War ended than with what that ending actually meant. Victory settled one enormous conflict, but it simultaneously exposed political, racial and imperial contradictions that had been temporarily obscured by the need to defeat Germany and Japan. The result is a book that is simultaneously military history, imperial history and an examination of the uncomfortable transition between the world of European colonial empires and the political order that followed them.

Craig ranges widely, moving through India, Burma, Borneo, Formosa, Indochina, the Dutch East Indies and Europe. His geographical reach is important because it prevents 1945 from becoming merely the final chapter of a predominantly European war. Instead, the year emerges as a moment when several different historical processes collided. Japan was collapsing, European colonial governments expected to recover territories lost in 1941 and 1942, nationalist movements had acquired new confidence, and populations that had endured occupation were discovering that liberation did not necessarily mean independence. Craig is particularly interested in the British Empire, although the Dutch and French imperial systems are also important to his wider argument.

One of the strongest aspects of the book is Craig’s decision to tell this enormous story through individuals. This reflects his considerable experience as a documentary filmmaker, and it gives 1945: The Reckoning an immediacy sometimes missing from broad geopolitical histories. Political decisions made in London, Washington, Delhi or military headquarters are repeatedly brought back to the people who had to live with their consequences. Indian soldiers, nationalists, prisoners, civilians, intelligence personnel and servicemen consequently become more than illustrations attached to a larger argument. Their experiences are part of the argument itself. Robert Lyman has similarly identified this combination of the collapse and emergence of empires with individual experience as central to Craig’s method.

India provides one of the clearest examples. The war had placed Indian soldiers in British uniform across numerous theatres while Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army attempted to achieve independence through cooperation with Japan. Craig does not reduce this situation to a comfortable choice between loyalists and collaborators. Families and communities could contain profoundly different responses to British rule, while individuals were required to make decisions within circumstances that were rarely of their own making. The importance of the Indian National Army therefore extended beyond its limited military achievements because its existence demonstrated that British authority over India could no longer be regarded as politically secure merely because Britain had emerged victorious from the war.

For an Australian reader, however, some of the most interesting material concerns Borneo. Craig examines Australian special operations there and raises difficult questions concerning the relationship between military necessity, intelligence operations and the restoration of imperial authority. This is particularly valuable because Australian accounts of the Pacific War can easily become dominated by Kokoda, Milne Bay, Buna, the campaigns in New Guinea and the controversial final operations of 1945. Craig places Australian activities within a wider imperial structure and asks whether some operations conventionally understood as contributions towards defeating Japan also served political purposes associated with the restoration of British influence.

This is precisely where 1945: The Reckoning is at its most provocative. The Allied powers had fought regimes whose aggression and brutality made their defeat necessary, yet Allied victory did not automatically transform Allied policy into an uncomplicated programme of liberation. Britain, France and the Netherlands still possessed imperial interests, and the defeat of Japan created opportunities to restore colonial governments as well as to liberate occupied populations. In Indochina and the East Indies the resulting contradictions became particularly stark when Japanese personnel who had recently been enemies could become useful in maintaining order or assisting attempts to reassert European control. Victory and liberation were therefore related concepts, but they were not synonymous.

Craig deserves considerable credit for confronting this without simply reversing the moral framework of the war. There is a temptation in revisionist accounts to expose the shortcomings of the victorious Allies and then allow those shortcomings to obscure the nature of the regimes they defeated. Craig generally avoids that trap. Japanese imperialism had brought conquest, exploitation, mass death and enormous suffering across Asia. Recognising the contradictions within Allied imperial policy does not make Japanese expansion a war of Asian liberation. Equally, acknowledging Japanese brutality cannot make the attempted restoration of European colonial rule politically unproblematic. The value of Craig’s approach lies in allowing both propositions to coexist.

There are nevertheless weaknesses in the method. The constant movement between individuals, countries and political problems creates energy, but occasionally sacrifices analytical depth. Readers accustomed to conventional military histories may also find the structure somewhat restless. Campaigns are not necessarily followed from beginning to end because Craig is interested in what particular events reveal rather than in reconstructing every operation. The documentary style that makes the book accessible can therefore become a limitation when an especially complicated political or military problem deserves sustained treatment.

The reliance upon individual experience creates another difficulty. Personal stories are exceptionally effective at demonstrating how historical processes affected human beings, but particularly memorable experiences can acquire a representative significance that they may not entirely deserve. An individual can illuminate an empire without necessarily explaining it. Craig is usually careful about this distinction, although there are occasions when the transition from personal experience to broader interpretation occurs more smoothly in narrative terms than it does analytically. This is perhaps an unavoidable consequence of attempting to combine popular narrative history with a subject of enormous geographical and political complexity.

There is also an inherent danger in judging 1945 too heavily through knowledge of what followed. We know that British India would disappear, that Indonesia would fight the Dutch for independence, that French attempts to recover Indochina would ultimately fail and that European colonial power across Asia was approaching its end. The people making decisions during 1945 did not possess this knowledge. Colonial officials who attempted to restore prewar authority were certainly defending imperial interests, but many genuinely believed that the imperial system could survive. Nationalist movements were gaining strength, but their eventual victories were not inevitable. At its best Craig preserves this uncertainty, although the book’s overarching theme of imperial reckoning occasionally makes the collapse of empire appear more predetermined than it would have seemed to contemporaries.

Yet this criticism also points towards the book’s greatest achievement. Craig makes 1945 feel uncertain again. The familiar historical sequence in which Germany surrendered in May, Japan surrendered in August and peace followed conceals an extraordinary period of political instability. Armies had won a world war while governments were already confronting another struggle over who would control the territories supposedly liberated by that victory. Former enemies became temporary instruments of policy, former colonial subjects demanded political rights with increasing confidence, and victorious European empires discovered that military success had not restored the world of 1939.

The title The Reckoning is therefore particularly appropriate. The reckoning was not simply Japan’s defeat or Germany’s destruction. It was also a confrontation between the ideals used to justify the Allied war and the political realities of empire. Ideas concerning freedom, national sovereignty and resistance to foreign aggression were difficult to restrict to Europeans once they had been invoked during a global conflict. Colonial peoples had fought, suffered, organised and observed the vulnerability of their rulers. European prestige, once damaged, could not simply be reconstructed by raising the old flags again.

For Australian readers this wider perspective is especially useful. Australian military history has understandably concentrated upon what Australian forces did, where they fought and whether particular operations were strategically justified. Craig encourages another question: what political order were those operations helping to create or restore? That does not invalidate the courage or sacrifice of Australian servicemen, nor does it mean that individual soldiers were conscious instruments of imperial policy. It simply places their service within the larger strategic and political structures in which Australia operated.

Ultimately, 1945: The Reckoning succeeds because it makes a familiar year unfamiliar. Craig has not written a comprehensive military history of 1945, and readers seeking detailed operational accounts will need to look elsewhere. What he provides instead is an ambitious interpretation of a world caught between war, empire and decolonisation. Its broad geographical canvas occasionally comes at the expense of depth, while its personal narrative method can sometimes carry more analytical weight than individual experience can comfortably support. These are significant reservations, but they do not undermine the central achievement.

The Second World War ended in Allied victory, but the world that produced that victory was already disappearing. Britain, France and the Netherlands could defeat their wartime enemies without recovering unquestioned authority over their former possessions, while Asian nationalist movements could emerge strengthened from a conflict in which their countries had frequently been treated as battlefields, colonies or strategic resources. Craig’s achievement is to show that August 1945 was simultaneously an ending and a beginning. The shooting stopped in some places while new conflicts were already forming in others.

For anyone interested in the Pacific War, Australian military history, the British Empire or the origins of postwar Southeast Asia, 1945: The Reckoning is consequently well worth reading. I did not agree equally with every implication of Craig’s interpretation, and at times I wanted him to remain with a particular campaign or political question longer than his narrative structure permits. That is not necessarily a weakness in a work of this kind. A good history should do more than confirm what we already believe. Craig succeeds in making the reader reconsider what Allied victory in 1945 actually represented, and why for millions of people throughout Asia the end of the Second World War did not necessarily mean that their struggle was over.

Every Dracula’s America posse eventually seems to acquire something that makes the gunfighters standing beside it look reassuringly ordinary. For the Congregation that role belongs to the Temple Snake, a huge serpent associated with their ceremonies and the mysterious powers of the Loa. I have named him Malachie, although among the people of Bayou Noir he is more respectfully known as Grand Serpent Malachie.

Stories concerning Malachie existed long before the Congregation. Older inhabitants of the Louisiana bayou claimed that an enormous pale serpent lived somewhere beyond the deepest channels of Bayou Noir, appearing only rarely and never behaving like an ordinary animal. Fishermen sometimes found enormous tracks through the mud where something had crossed between waterways, while hunters occasionally discovered places where every bird, frog and insect had suddenly fallen silent. Most sensible people saw such signs and went somewhere else.

Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste grew up hearing these stories from their mother, who taught them that Malachie was neither a pet nor a creature to be hunted. The serpent belonged to the places where the mortal and spirit worlds approached one another, and whether he was simply an ancient creature touched by supernatural power or something sent by the Loa was a question nobody had satisfactorily answered. Auguste Delacroix maintains that knowing the answer is considerably less important than showing Malachie the appropriate respect.

The serpent first openly appeared during the troubled days following the Dark Confederacy attack upon Bayou Noir. As the dead were returned to their graves and the community began repairing what had been destroyed, Malachie emerged from the swamp and coiled himself beside the place where the Congregation conducted its ceremonies. He remained there throughout the night, ignoring those gathered around him before disappearing into the water shortly before dawn. Étienne interpreted his appearance as a sign that the spirits had recognised the struggle that was beginning.

Since then Malachie has become the Temple Snake of the Congregation, although the title suggests considerably more ownership than actually exists. He comes and goes according to purposes of his own, sometimes remaining near the Congregation for days before disappearing into the bayou for weeks. Nobody feeds him, nobody attempts to restrain him and even Mathieu Baptiste has enough sense not to discover what happens if someone tries to give him an order.

When Malachie accompanies the Congregation beyond Louisiana, his presence is taken as evidence that the Loa have a particular interest in whatever lies ahead. The enormous serpent moves alongside the posse rather than under its command, appearing from woodland, water or darkness when needed and disappearing just as unpredictably afterwards. Those unfamiliar with the Congregation sometimes ask how its members control such a creature.

After the Church of Dagon, Dark Confederacy, Crimson Coven of Salem and Twilight Order, my next Dracula’s America posse takes me into the Louisiana bayou. The Congregation are Voodoo worshippers sworn to defend the remnants of the Free South, drawing supernatural power from the mysterious Loa and directing much of their fury against the Dark Confederacy. Where Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair and his followers seek to command the dead, the Congregation believes that the relationship between the living, the dead and the spirit world must be respected.

The Congregation began among the isolated settlements of Bayou Noir, where Voodoo traditions had survived war and upheaval and where the presence of the spirit world had long been accepted as part of everyday existence. That isolation ended when followers of the Dark Confederacy entered the bayou searching for an old burial ground believed to contain the remains of powerful Voodoo practitioners. They intended to open the graves, raise the dead and carry whatever secrets they discovered back to Blackthorn Hall.

The people of Bayou Noir resisted, but the Confederates forced their way into the cemetery and opened the first grave. In doing so they attracted the attention of powers they neither understood nor controlled.

At the centre of what followed were the brothers Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste, sons of a local boatman and a respected Voodoo practitioner. Both had experienced the presence of the Loa since childhood, although their relationships with the spirits developed very differently. Étienne was cautious and contemplative, receiving warnings through dreams and strange fragments of knowledge, while Mathieu’s encounters were more immediate and unpredictable. Their mother taught them that being noticed by the Loa was not a privilege to be celebrated, but an obligation that carried responsibilities of its own.

Both brothers eventually became Vessels, capable of allowing the Loa to act through them. Étienne approaches this role with considerable caution, regarding himself as little more than a doorway between worlds, while Mathieu is more willing to surrender himself to whatever spirit answers the call. Neither believes that he commands the Loa. The spirits possess their own personalities and purposes, and whatever assistance they provide inevitably carries expectations in return.

When the Dark Confederacy violated the cemetery, both brothers answered. Witnesses later spoke of voices emerging from the darkness, water moving against the current and figures appearing among the cypress trees where no living person had stood. Most disturbing of all for the Confederates, the corpses they had raised ceased obeying their commands and turned upon them. By sunrise the survivors were fleeing Bayou Noir.

Étienne subsequently disappeared into the swamp for three days before returning with a warning. The attack had not been an isolated incident. The Dark Confederacy would continue disturbing graves, raising the dead and imposing its own twisted vision upon the shattered South. The communities of the bayou could wait for them to return, or somebody could carry the fight beyond Louisiana.

Thus the Congregation was born.

Étienne and Mathieu were soon joined by Voodoo practitioners, hunters, boatmen, former soldiers and gunfighters from across the bayou. Some understood the Loa intimately, while others understood little beyond the wisdom of showing them respect. What united them was the belief that the Free South belonged to the living and that the dead should not become soldiers for men unwilling to accept that their war had ended.

For my posse, the two Baptiste brothers also solve the problem of having two Vessel miniatures. Rather than leave a duplicate figure unused, both now have a place within the developing story. Étienne provides the calmer spiritual centre of the Congregation, while Mathieu offers a more unpredictable connection with the spirit world. Eventually their hunt will take them to Blackthorn Hall. Lucien Saint Clair may command the dead, but the Loa have not forgotten them.

I have always been interested in historical mysteries, particularly those stories that sit somewhere between established history and speculation. I do not have to believe a story to find it fascinating. Quite often the more interesting question is where the story came from in the first place, which parts can be supported by evidence, and how a collection of separate events eventually became accepted by some people as a single historical narrative.

That was what drew me to Station 211.

The story is certainly a remarkable one. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Nazi Germany sent the Schwabenland to Antarctica. Aircraft carried aboard the ship surveyed and photographed a large area of the continent, German markers were dropped, geographical features were recorded and the region became known as New Swabia. Germany clearly had economic and territorial interests in Antarctica, although the outbreak of war brought its planned continuation of the programme to an end.

At least, that is where the documented story appears to end.

What happened afterwards is where things become much more interesting.

German U boats surrendered in Argentina months after Germany had been defeated. During the war Britain had quietly mounted Operation Tabarin, establishing bases in Antarctica. Then, in 1946 and 1947, the United States sent the enormous Operation Highjump south under Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen, with Richard E. Byrd closely associated with the expedition. Ships, aircraft and thousands of men suddenly appeared in the Antarctic.

Meanwhile another story was developing. The Allies were discovering just how far some areas of German wartime technology had progressed. Jet aircraft, rockets, guided weapons and advanced submarines were no longer rumours. They were real. German scientists were taken to the United States after the war, while reports of strange objects in the sky were beginning the modern flying saucer era.

Over time these separate pieces became joined together.

The German Antarctic expedition became the beginning of a secret base. The late U boat surrenders became supply or evacuation missions. Operation Tabarin became a British attempt to investigate the Germans. Highjump became an American assault on the base. German experimental technology became flying discs, and somewhere beneath the Antarctic ice supposedly stood Station 211, an underground installation in which German personnel and perhaps their technology had survived the end of the Third Reich.

It is a wonderful story.

But is it history?

That question became the basis of my new book, Station 211: The Nazi Antarctic Mystery: History, Evidence and the Making of a Legend.

I did not want to write a book simply dismissing the entire subject as nonsense, because that would be almost as unsatisfactory as accepting every claim made about Station 211. There is too much genuine history behind the legend for that. The German expedition really happened. New Swabia was real. The U boats were real. Operation Tabarin and Operation Highjump were real. German technological achievements were real. Even some of the secrecy surrounding these events was real.

The problem is determining whether the connections between them are equally real.

That meant going back to the events themselves and examining them in sequence. What were the Germans actually doing in Antarctica in 1938 and 1939? Could they have established a permanent base with the men and equipment available? Could such a base have been supplied during the war? Where did U 530 and U 977 actually go before surrendering in Argentina? What was Britain doing during Operation Tabarin? Why did the Americans mount Highjump? When did flying saucers and secret German technology become part of the Antarctic story, and when does the name Station 211 actually appear in that developing narrative?

There is another difficulty that I did not want to ignore. Antarctica is enormous, remote and covered by snow and ice. It would be foolish to suggest that because something has not been found it therefore cannot exist. A small German cache, marker, shelter or other physical remnant could conceivably remain undiscovered beneath decades of accumulated snow and ice.

A vast underground military complex is another matter entirely. Such a base would have required ships, men, machinery, fuel, food, communications, construction materials and a continuing wartime supply system. Snow might conceal the remains of a structure, but it cannot so easily conceal the logistical history required to build and maintain it.

That distinction became increasingly important as I worked through the story.

The book therefore became about more than whether there was a secret Nazi base in Antarctica. It became an investigation into how historical legends are created. A genuine expedition, a mysterious submarine surrender, a secret British operation, a huge American naval expedition and genuine German secret weapons can each be documented independently. Put them together, remove some of the chronology and fill the gaps with speculation, however, and something quite different begins to emerge.

That process turned out to be every bit as interesting as Station 211 itself.

I have tried to approach the subject with an open mind while keeping one rule throughout the book: possibility is not the same thing as evidence. Where something is established, I say so. Where something remains possible, I leave that possibility open. Where the evidence does not support a claim, I explain why.

For readers interested in the Second World War, Antarctica, U boats, secret weapons, flying saucers or simply a good historical mystery, I hope there will be plenty here to explore.

Station 211: The Nazi Antarctic Mystery is ultimately my attempt to discover what remains when one of the twentieth century’s more extraordinary legends is taken apart and its pieces returned to their proper historical setting.

And perhaps that is where the real mystery begins.

The book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited and in paperback.on Amazon in the next few days.