Doomed Battalion: Mateship and Leadership in War and Captivity the Australian 2/40 Battalion, 1940-45

The comprehensive and much sought after history of the 2/40th Infantry Battalion during World War II.

Doomed Battalion is the story of nearly one thousand Australian soldiers of the 2/40 Battalion – mainly Tasmanians – who were sent to garrison an airfield in Dutch Timor immediately after the Japanese entered the Second World War. Assigned a hopeless military task within a misguided strategy, they were captured a week after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. For the next three and a half years they were more thoroughly scattered in prison camps throughout Asia than the men of any comparable Australian unit. Their experiences represent microcosm the experience of Australians in Japanese hands in the Pacific theatre.

Using a combination of documentary material and interviews, the book represents the most comprehensive reconstruction and analysis of the fighting in Dutch Timor yet written. It is also a penetrating and sensitive study of the complexities of the prisoner of war experience – the psychology of incarceration; the nature of prisoners’ relationships with other Australians, their officers, and prisoners of other nationalities; and the operation of mateship and leadership under extreme hardship. A complex, readable and deeply human story of Australians in war and captivity. pp. xxix, 407 Illusts First Edition #0417