The Thirty-Niners

In very good condition - has inscription on front cover - has markings from use - due to differing weights in books, postage maybe adjusted at checkout.

They were branded 'economic conscripts', 'five bob a day murderers', fugitives from wives, families and responsibility. And the original volunteers for the second Australian Imperial Force, the men who enlisted in those last months of 1939, were reckless, adventurous, wild and flamboyant. They were also, according to General Sir Thomas Blamey, 'the first and the finest'; men raised on the feats of the ANZACs and keen to uphold its legend.

The Thirty-niners sailed for the Middle East in early 1940. Their grand and successful campaigns in the Libyan Desert - the storming of Bardia and Tobruk and the capture of thousands of prisoners - were followed by the debacles of Greece and Crete. Nearly one-third of these original volunteers spent the rest of the war in German POW camps.

Using letters, diaries, interviews, published battalion and unit memoirs and official histories and documents, Peter Charlton looks at the powerful legend of the AIF, the troubled response of the Australian Government to the early days of the war and the arguments over the return of the troops to Australia in 1942. Against this background are the stories of the original volunteers. Why did they join? What did they expect? He traces their lives through nearly six years of war, their conflicts with the militia and the British in the Middle East, their return to Australia and the war in New Guinea.

The Thirty-niners is a powerful, fascinating and human story of Australians at war, men whose disrespect was legendary but whose courage and dash was greatly admired.