Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9780733648533
Format: Trade paperback (UK)
Year: 2025
Publisher: Hachette Australia


Description:
From bestselling author Michael Veitch (Australia's Secret Army, Turning Point) comes the story of the brilliant, yet controversial campaign which ended Australia's involvement in World War II.

Borneo: The Last Campaign tells the story of Operation OBOE, the massive, three-pronged assault on the vast Japanese-held island of Borneo in 1945. It was one of the largest amphibious invasions of the entire war, and a virtually all-Australian operation.

Over the final twelve weeks of World War Two, the 1st Australian Army Corps chased down and fought the remnants of the Japanese army over burning oil fields, up languid tropical rivers, along leech-ridden jungle tracks and across endless hills, valleys and ridges. Far from being the easy 'mopping-up' the men had been told to expect, Borneo turned out to be as savage as anything the Aussies had hitherto encountered in the Pacific, as the Japanese - despite the inevitability of their defeat - continued fighting with fanaticism, tenacity and shocking brutality.

Immensely complex but brilliantly planned, OBOE called for Australia's two most famous Infantry Divisions - the 7th and 9th - to storm ashore at three separate landing areas supported by US and Australian naval forces and local Dyak guerrilla fighters. Their objectives were to secure Borneo's oil facilities and liberate its long-suffering people.

Although now largely forgotten, as well as mired in the controversy that it had little effect on the overall outcome of the war, the skill, bravery and determination showed by the average Australian soldier on Borneo - many o