I picked up Jonathan King’s Great Battles in Australian History in a thrift shop, more out of curiosity than expectation. My first instinct was to turn to the contents page and see what had been included and, just as importantly, what had been left out. Books with titles like this always invite that sort of reaction. They make a bold promise, and anyone with an interest in Australian military history immediately begins making their own private list of the battles that simply must be there.

To my surprise, I was impressed.

That does not mean I agreed with every choice, nor that the book is without its limitations, but I was struck by the sheer range of battles King managed to bring together. The book is not confined to the usual sacred ground of Gallipoli, the Western Front, Kokoda and Long Tan, although those familiar names are naturally present. Its strength is that it attempts to place Australian fighting experience into a much wider frame, moving across different periods, wars, theatres and types of conflict. For a general reader, and even for a reader who already knows a fair amount of the ground, this gives the book more value than I expected when I first picked it up.

King writes in an accessible, popular history style. This is not a dense academic study, and it is not trying to be one. The chapters are designed to be read as individual battle narratives, with enough background to explain why the action mattered and enough personal detail to keep the human element in view. That approach will not satisfy readers looking for a heavily footnoted operational analysis, but it does make the book readable. In many ways it is the sort of book that can be dipped into, read out of sequence, and used as a prompt for further reading.

One of the book’s real strengths is the breadth of each entry. While it is not a detailed exposé of every battle, nevertheless each action is covered in adequate depth for the reader wanting an overview with some detail. King does not simply name a battle, give a quick summary, and move on. In most cases he provides enough surrounding context for the reader to understand where the battle fits within the larger campaign or historical moment. The entries are necessarily brief, because the book covers so much ground, but they are not bare sketches. Each one generally gives the reader the background, the main action, the key personalities, and some sense of consequence. That makes the book more satisfying than a simple catalogue of battles, and it allows a reader to come to an unfamiliar action and still leave with a reasonable grasp of why it mattered.

The title does carry a problem. “Great battles” is always a loaded phrase. Great in what sense? Great because of scale, consequence, sacrifice, heroism, memory, or national mythology? Australian military history has often been shaped by commemoration as much as analysis, and a book like this inevitably sits inside that tradition. Some inclusions feel obvious, while others raise interesting questions about what counts as an Australian battle. There is also the broader issue of what Australian history chooses to remember as battle, and what it leaves in the margins. Frontier conflict, irregular warfare, naval actions, air operations, peacekeeping and coalition warfare all sit uneasily beside the familiar infantry centred Anzac narrative.

That said, King deserves credit for attempting breadth. A narrower book would have been easier to write and probably safer. Instead, this one gives the reader a broad sweep of Australian fighting experience, and that alone makes it useful. It encourages comparison between battles that are often treated separately and reminds us that Australian military history is not a single story but a collection of different experiences, fought in different places, under different conditions, and for very different reasons.

The book is at its best when read as an introduction rather than a final word. It opens doors. It gives the reader a sense of sequence, importance and drama, but it should not be mistaken for the last authority on any one battle. Some chapters inevitably feel compressed, and specialists will find places where they want more context, more argument or more engagement with recent scholarship. That is the price of covering so much ground in one volume.

For me, the pleasure of the book lay in the fact that it was better and broader than I expected. I began by looking for omissions. I ended by appreciating the ambition. A thrift shop find is always a small gamble, and this one paid off. Great Battles in Australian History is not a definitive military history of Australia, but it is a worthwhile and readable survey of many of the battles that have shaped the Australian military imagination. It is a useful book for the general reader, a handy refresher for the enthusiast, and a good starting point for anyone wanting to think more seriously about which battles Australia remembers, and why.

There are many books about the Burma Thailand Railway and the experience of Allied prisoners of war under the Japanese, but relatively few manage to move beyond the familiar narrative structure of brutality, endurance, starvation, disease, and survival. A Week in September by Peter Rees and Sue Langford succeeds largely because it approaches the subject from a different direction. Rather than attempting another broad operational history of the railway itself, the book narrows its focus onto the relationship between one Australian prisoner of war, Scott Heywood, and the family waiting for him at home. In doing so it produces something far more intimate and emotionally effective than many larger histories.

At the centre of the book are the letters Scott secretly wrote while imprisoned by the Japanese. These letters were never sent during the war and survived almost by accident. They form the emotional and structural backbone of the narrative. This immediately gives the work a degree of authenticity and immediacy that many retrospective memoirs struggle to achieve. The reader is not encountering memory shaped decades later through nostalgia, trauma, or public commemoration. Instead the letters capture uncertainty as it was being lived. Scott does not know whether he will survive. He does not know whether his family remains safe. He does not know whether the war will end soon or continue indefinitely. That uncertainty permeates the book and gives it much of its emotional power.

One of the strengths of the work is its restraint. The authors avoid turning Scott into a mythologised heroic figure. He emerges instead as a recognisably ordinary Australian attempting to maintain dignity, emotional connection, and personal identity under conditions designed to strip all three away. That approach is far more effective than overt heroics would have been. The emotional impact comes precisely from the normality of the concerns expressed in the letters. Scott worries about his wife, his children, the farm, and the possibility of returning to an ordinary domestic life that increasingly feels distant and fragile. The railway itself remains present as a brutal environment but it is often pushed into the background by the emotional and psychological effort required simply to remain human.

The home front material involving Margery Heywood is equally important to the success of the book. Too many POW narratives unintentionally isolate captivity from the wider social experience of war. A Week in September avoids this problem by constantly shifting between Scott’s imprisonment and the struggles faced by the family at home. Margery’s experience of uncertainty, loneliness, financial pressure, and emotional endurance becomes central rather than peripheral. The result is a broader understanding of captivity as something extending far beyond the camps themselves. Families endured their own form of prolonged psychological warfare through silence, incomplete information, and constant fear of official telegrams.

The book is also strongest when dealing with emotional continuity across time. The letters create an almost suspended world where Scott attempts to preserve connections to family life despite the physical reality of imprisonment. In many ways the letters become acts of resistance. Not resistance in the military sense, but resistance against isolation, dehumanisation, and emotional collapse. That is where the book finds its real subject. The Burma Railway becomes not simply a location of suffering but a test of whether identity and family attachment could survive prolonged separation and brutality.

Where the book is less successful is in its broader historical analysis. Readers seeking a detailed examination of the Burma Thailand Railway itself may find the work limited. The operational and administrative structures behind the railway receive relatively light treatment. Japanese command systems, labour organisation, engineering demands, camp administration, mortality patterns, and the wider strategic context are all present but remain secondary. The book does not attempt to engage deeply with historiographical debates surrounding Japanese wartime responsibility, prisoner labour systems, or the broader military logic behind the railway’s construction.

This is not necessarily a flaw because the authors are clearly pursuing a different objective, but it does mean the book sits more comfortably within popular narrative history than academic military history. Specialists already familiar with the railway will probably learn little new about the larger campaign or the functioning of the camps themselves. The historical framework occasionally feels too light for the emotional weight being carried by the personal material. At times the narrative risks narrowing the war down to an intensely individual experience without fully reconnecting that experience to the larger structures that created it.

There are also moments where the emotional framing edges close to sentimentality. The letters are genuinely moving documents and the story itself possesses inherent emotional force, but occasionally the authors lean too heavily into that emotional resonance rather than allowing the material to stand on its own. The strongest sections are often the simplest and most restrained. Scott’s ordinary observations frequently carry more power than the interpretive commentary surrounding them.

Even so, the book succeeds because its central source material is so compelling. The letters provide a rare window into captivity before memory and commemoration reshape experience into cleaner narrative forms. They preserve uncertainty, fear, affection, and hope in a remarkably immediate way. That immediacy gives the work a humanity sometimes absent from broader campaign histories.

In the end, A Week in September is not really a history of the Burma Thailand Railway in the conventional sense. It is a history of emotional endurance under wartime separation. The railway forms the physical setting, but the true subject of the book is the attempt to maintain family, identity, and emotional connection across immense distance and suffering. As a work of personal wartime history it is highly effective. As a broader military history it is more limited. The book works best when read not as a comprehensive study of the railway itself, but as a deeply personal exploration of captivity, absence, and survival.

Another pick up from a thrift shop, this one was a great read that I really enjoyed.

The Vickers 75 mm anti aircraft gun, officially designated in Dutch service as the 75 mm TL.nr.1 (Tegen Luchtdoelen Nummer 1), shown on naval mount. The model, crew, and mule limber are from Tiger Miniatures. The model is designated by Tiger as a 75mm gun. I am using it as the Vickers mentioned above. Not actually sure what the model is but it is close enough to the above photograph,

This gun formed the backbone of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army’s anti aircraft defence during the final years before the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies in 1941 and 1942. Purchased from Vickers Armstrongs during the interwar rearmament period, the weapon represented one of the most modern heavy anti aircraft systems available to the KNIL at the time, although chronic shortages in numbers, ammunition, and supporting technology severely limited its overall effectiveness once war reached the archipelago.

Picture from the Military Museum Montjuich Castle, Barcelona .

Technically the weapon was an impressive design for the early 1930s. The gun fired a 75 mm high explosive fragmentation shell using timed fuses and could sustain a rate of fire of approximately fifteen to twenty rounds per minute under ideal conditions. Its maximum effective vertical ceiling approached 9,000 metres, giving it the theoretical capability to engage high altitude bombers. The weapon utilised a hydro pneumatic recoil system and sat upon a four legged cruciform firing platform which allowed rapid all round traverse once deployed. In action the transport wheels were lifted clear of the ground and the gun effectively became a stable static anti aircraft platform capable of tracking aircraft through a full 360 degrees. In appearance and concept it closely resembled contemporary heavy anti aircraft systems such as the German 88 mm Flak.

One of the more important features of the Vickers design was its dual purpose capability. The barrel could be depressed to horizontal or near horizontal firing angles, allowing the gun to engage ground targets as well as aircraft. In theory this gave the KNIL a highly flexible weapon capable of functioning against armoured vehicles, infantry concentrations, or defensive strongpoints if required. This reflected wider interwar trends in anti aircraft artillery design where armies increasingly sought weapons capable of fulfilling multiple battlefield roles.

Before the outbreak of war with Japan, KNIL planners concentrated their limited number of heavy anti aircraft batteries around strategically vital installations across Java. Significant deployments protected the naval base at Soerabaja, one of the most important Allied naval facilities in Southeast Asia and a constant target for Japanese air attack during the campaign.

Other batteries defended Batavia and nearby airfields including Tjililitan, while additional guns were positioned around Bandoeng, the mountain headquarters of the KNIL high command. These locations reflected Dutch strategic priorities. The guns were intended not simply to protect cities but to preserve naval infrastructure, airfields, command facilities, and the communications network necessary to sustain resistance across the colony.

In practice however, the effectiveness of the Vickers 75 mm was undermined by severe technological and logistical deficiencies. The KNIL lacked adequate radar systems and modern fire control equipment. Gun crews were therefore forced to rely largely upon optical rangefinders and visual tracking methods when engaging fast moving Japanese aircraft. Against modern Japanese bombers operating at altitude, and particularly against agile fighters such as the Mitsubishi Zero, this represented a major disadvantage. Even an effective gun became difficult to employ successfully without accurate ranging and coordinated fire control. As a result, many engagements involved large volumes of defensive fire with relatively limited success in actually destroying attacking aircraft.

Ammunition shortages compounded the problem. Dutch preparations for a prolonged air defence campaign proved insufficient once Japanese operations accelerated in early 1942. The rapid pace of the Japanese advance across Southeast Asia placed enormous pressure upon already strained supply systems, while constant air attacks disrupted transport and communications. The heavy anti aircraft batteries therefore fought under increasingly difficult conditions as the campaign progressed.

Despite these limitations, the Vickers 75 mm batteries represented some of the most modern and technically sophisticated artillery available to the KNIL during the campaign for the Dutch East Indies. Their presence demonstrated that Dutch military planners had recognised the growing importance of air power during the interwar period and had attempted, within financial and political limitations, to modernise colonial defences accordingly. The problem was not necessarily the quality of the weapon itself, but the broader inability of the Dutch colonial military system to integrate sufficient numbers of modern aircraft, radar systems, ammunition reserves, and coordinated command structures into a coherent defensive network before the Japanese offensive began.

Following the surrender of the Dutch East Indies in March 1942, surviving Vickers 75 mm guns were captured by the Japanese and subsequently reused in local island defence roles across the occupied territories. Like many colonial weapons systems of the period, the guns outlived the army that originally deployed them, becoming part of the wider material legacy of the Pacific War.

More KNIL coming in the next few days.

Forgotten War opens strongly with its discussion of the origins and early strategic setting of the conflict. Walter is at his best when outlining the wider geopolitical framework and demonstrating how political hesitation, imperial commitments, and strategic uncertainty shaped the opening stages of the war. These early chapters effectively communicate the atmosphere of confusion and improvisation that surrounded the initial campaigns. However, even here the pattern that defines the rest of the book quickly emerges. Important strategic debates are introduced, sometimes very effectively, but the narrative moves on before those debates are fully explored. Questions surrounding alliance coordination, command priorities, and competing strategic visions are raised but rarely examined in sustained deta.l

The sections dealing with the land campaigns are particularly uneven. Walter often provides a competent operational summary of advances, withdrawals, and major engagements, but there is comparatively little examination of battlefield mechanics or command friction. For example, when discussing major offensives, the book frequently outlines objectives, troop movements, and final outcomes without fully analysing how terrain, supply, morale, communications, or junior leadership affected operations on the ground. Battles can therefore feel strangely detached from the soldiers fighting them. The reader understands broadly what happened, but not always how or why events unfolded in the manner they did.

This becomes especially noticeable in the chapters covering jungle operations and difficult terrain warfare. Walter acknowledges the brutal environmental conditions, logistical fragility, disease, exhaustion, and isolation that shaped combat, yet these factors are often treated descriptively rather than analytically. There are moments where the book hints at deeper operational realities, particularly regarding the inability of commanders to maintain cohesion across difficult terrain, but these observations are rarely developed into sustained arguments. Instead the narrative quickly returns to broader campaign movements.

The naval chapters illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of the book particularly clearly. Walter succeeds in conveying the strategic importance of maritime operations and repeatedly reminds the reader that sea control underpinned the entire conduct of the war. Convoys, fleet movements, amphibious operations, and logistical shipping networks are all integrated into the broader narrative. However, these sections frequently read as compressed summaries of events rather than detailed naval history. Fleet engagements are described efficiently but often without much discussion of doctrine, command philosophy, intelligence assessment, or the practical realities of naval operations. The book identifies naval power as critical while rarely pausing to examine its operational complexity.

The air campaign sections follow a similar pattern. Walter clearly understands that air power shaped both strategic planning and battlefield outcomes, and the book regularly shifts toward discussions of bombing campaigns, reconnaissance, air superiority, and logistical air support. Yet these sections often remain general in tone. Air operations are described more through their strategic consequences than through detailed examination of operational methods, aircraft limitations, pilot experience, or evolving doctrine. There is comparatively little sustained discussion of how air forces adapted tactically over time or how commanders balanced competing operational priorities.

One of the more interesting parts of the book is its discussion of inter service coordination. Walter repeatedly demonstrates how difficult it was to synchronise land, sea, and air operations across vast distances and under conditions of uncertainty. Some of the strongest passages occur when he shows how failures in communication or conflicting operational priorities created friction between commands. These moments provide glimpses of the deeper analytical study the book could perhaps have become had it narrowed its focus. Unfortunately these discussions are usually brief before the narrative moves toward another campaign or theatre.

The treatment of logistics is similarly mixed. Walter deserves credit for consistently reminding the reader that supply shaped operational possibilities. Shipping shortages, inadequate infrastructure, fuel demands, weather, and distance all appear throughout the work as recurring constraints on military action. However, logistics often functions more as narrative background than as a fully developed analytical theme. The reader is frequently told that supply difficulties existed, but there is less examination of precisely how those problems altered operational decisions or battlefield performance.

The book’s treatment of commanders and leadership is also somewhat superficial. Senior commanders appear regularly throughout the narrative, yet Walter seldom spends enough time examining their operational methods, personalities, or decision making processes in depth. Leadership becomes reduced largely to decisions and outcomes rather than being explored as a dynamic process shaped by uncertainty, institutional culture, personality, and incomplete information. As a result many commanders emerge more as names attached to operations than as fully realised historical figures.

Walter is more effective when discussing the broader strategic trajectory of the war. The sections analysing shifting momentum, industrial capacity, and alliance cooperation provide some of the book’s clearest thematic continuity. The reader gains a strong sense of how the conflict evolved from crisis and improvisation toward increasing organisational and material dominance. In these sections the broad survey style actually works to the book’s advantage because Walter can move across multiple theatres to demonstrate wider strategic patterns.
The weakness remains that nearly every topic introduced feels compressed. Intelligence failures, amphibious doctrine, special operations, coalition tensions, training deficiencies, and technological adaptation all appear briefly throughout the text, often interestingly, but rarely receive the space necessary for deep analysis. The cumulative effect is a work that constantly gestures toward complexity without fully unpacking it.

Stylistically, the prose remains accessible and readable throughout. Walter avoids becoming buried beneath technical jargon or excessive detail, which likely explains why the book has appealed to many general readers. The pacing is brisk and the narrative rarely stagnates. Yet this readability also contributes to the sense of historical compression. Campaigns and operations move past quickly, sometimes so quickly that the reader scarcely has time to absorb their significance before the book transitions elsewhere.

Ultimately, the central criticism remains unavoidable. The book tries to cover too much. Walter clearly wanted to produce a comprehensive account encompassing the entire conflict across land, sea, and air domains while also addressing politics, strategy, logistics, and diplomacy. That ambition is admirable, but it produces a study that often sacrifices depth for scope. The reader finishes the book with a broad understanding of the war’s overall shape and progression, yet without the detailed insight that comes from sustained focus on particular campaigns, operational problems, or military institutions.

As a broad introductory synthesis the book has considerable value. As a deeply analytical military history it remains frustratingly thin. It is a work that continually introduces important ideas, compelling operational problems, and fascinating strategic tensions, but too often moves on before those subjects can truly develop.

Not what I was expecting. If you have some knowledge of this theatre of the war don’t buy it. If you want a broad approach it is worthwhile. Not a fan!

This Miniatures was a prize I won last year from Pluto Minis at Mega 25 for my display. stand and I have only just completed it.

This is a great miniature in a striking pose (pun intended). Not sure when I will use it but it looks good on the shelf!

Phew! Finally finished what I had planned to do. There are a few small to very small pieces that I plan to use as basing terrain for some SciFi models down the track,

Below is how they will look combined on the tabletop.

Now at some stage I will need to work on the SciFi “Necron style” terrain.

These have a rather unique tower shape that I quite like,

Last lot tomorrow.

initially I was a bit disappointed with these as the painted cracked when dry. However, a very liberal coat of gloss varnish stopped it from flaking off and produced a really cool “veined” effect. A pity it wasn’t deliberate.

In the home straight – two more lots to go.

This particular “Alien Forest” piece is my favourite.

I am gradually working my way through these. Alas a few more days to go.

More soon