Australians In World War II: United Kingdom (2015)
 
 
This commemorative publication is a part of the series; Australians in World War II. This resource focuses on Australians who served Britain, or operated from British airports and ports, during the war.
 
In 1940, when members of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) arrived at their camp on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, they found reminders that their parents' generation had been there before them, during the First World War. The previous Australian occupants of the camp had carved the Rising Sun badge and a map of Australia into the nearby chalk hills. In the earlier war Britain had been 'Blighty', visited by more than 260,000 Australians training for, or resting from, service on the Western Front. The Second World War took a different shape and, for Australia, the fighting in the Middle East and the Pacific was the main focus. Nevertheless, approximately 34,000 Australians served at least for a short time in Britain, or operated from British airfields and ports, and what they lacked in numbers they made up for in the variety of wartime tasks performed. From nursing during the Blitz to escorting Atlantic convoys, flying fighter sweeps over France or landing on the D-Day beaches in Normandy, there was hardly a military or naval assignment, or a battle, where Australians were not present. The cost was high: 5400 Australians died in air operations in Britain and in western Europe, and 300 died serving on land or at sea.
 
Soft Cover
166 pages
In Good Condition