Review Hell's Battlefield: The Australians in New Guinea in World War II

[AWP]

Disclaimer: I'm about halfway through the book at the moment.

Great book so far and I can't imagine that will change. Since this covers the whole of the PNG campaign, Kokoda features as much as Buna or Gona. There's also a chapter about the Battle of the Bismark Sea (airpower folks would appreciate that gem). I think the first 7-8 chapters should be required reading for any CGO. It wasn't uncommon for battalions to leave the line with a half dozen or so officers. Casualties among CGO's were ridiculous. It makes you realize the burden of leadership.

The book does a great job of conveying the horrendous conditions and absolute piss poor leadership endured by the Australians and Americans. The author is quick to praise or condemn either nation's performance, so I'd say he is fairly balanced with his writing....unless you're a MacArthur fan. If you like Dugout Doug you maaayyy want to skip this book.

My one criticism concerns the maps. Maps are overall battles or areas while the book spend a lot of time describing unit actions. I don't think the maps are detailed enough to reflect the described events.

Well worth the read, particularly since it is about an unknown piece of WWII.

 

[pardus]

I'm very interested to hear your AAR on this book. Sounds very interesting so far.

 

[AWP]

I'm very interested to hear your AAR on this book. Sounds very interesting so far.

Great book. I'll start with the Cons first because they also exhibit some strengths.

Rick Atkinson's excellent (5+ stars out of 5) Liberation Trilogy is hard to beat, but I think Mr. Bradley could make a run at it from the Aussie side if he had the time or patience. The book clocks in at 500+ pages and feels "cluttered." It has a great amount of detail but is almost confusing because of the detail and sausage like method of writing. By that I mean he tries to push it all in, 100 words in a 500 word book. I think he could do his own trilogy or a two-parter, flesh out some details and stories, and have an even better product. One other Con is the boo's map sections. He provides several high level views, and a few battlefield level maps, but I think the latter aren't granular enough. You have to visualize the battlefields or just accept the "Tom went here, threw a grenade, killed a machine gunner" style or writing.

Minus the maps, the book feels like a he had 3x the number of words, but did what he could to make it "fit" in 500 pages.

I still recommend the book though. It does a good job of representing the Aussies and Americans in the PNG during WWII. The American pieces are limited to their roles in the campaigns or battles, but he doesn't dwell on them which is good. He is critical of every nation, another plus, but focuses on the Aussies because that's the topic of the book.

Great book, worth a read, but a bit jumbled at times for the reasons mentioned above. If anything, read it and then jump into battle or campaign specific books like Kokoda or something similar, particularly if you're like me and know little of that segment of WWII.