- Title:
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Semut: The Untold Story of a Secret Australian Operation in WWII Borneo
- Written by:
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Christine Helliwell
- Read by:
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Dorje Swallow; Christine Helliwell
- Format:
-
Unabridged CD Audio Book
- Number of CDs:
-
12
- Duration:
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13 hours 54 minutes
- Published:
-
July 02 2021
- Available Date:
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July 02 2021
- Age Category:
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Adult
- ISBN:
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9781867544920
- Genres:
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Non-fiction; History; Military; World War II
- Publisher:
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Bolinda/Penguin Audio Australia
Qty
Format
Price
Bolinda price
Australian author
This is the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret military operation launched by the organisation popularly known as Z Special Unit in the final months of WWII.
March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island’s indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know little about Dayaks, other than that they were once headhunters who might kill them on arrival. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face.
This is the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret military operation launched by the organisation popularly known as Z Special Unit in the final months of WWII. Anthropologist Christine Helliwell has called on her years of first-hand knowledge of Borneo, interviewed more than one hundred Dayak people and all the remaining Semut operatives, and consulted thousands of military and other documents to piece together this astonishing story. Focusing on the operation's activities along two of Borneo’s great rivers – the Baram and Rejang – this audiobook provides a detailed military history of Semut II’s and Semut III’s brutal guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, and reveals the decisive but long-overlooked Dayak role in the operation.
'The incredible, little-known story of Australia’s top secret ‘Z’ operations deep inside Japanese lines in Sarawak in 1945 ... A superb read, brilliantly researched, written in prose as sharp as a machete.'
Paul Ham