Gallipoli hero, Victoria Cross recipient, battalion and brigade commander,
conqueror of Damascus and defiant antagonist of the Japanese - by any measure
Arthur Seaforth Blackburn was one of Australia's most remarkable soldiers.
The skinny solicitor from Adelaide had the knack of gravitating to the
hottest part of a battle. As one of the first ashore, Blackburn made it further
inland on Gallipoli's first day that any other soldier whose name is known. At
Pozieres, the biggest and costliest battle in Australia's history, he closed a
potentially calamitous gap in the Australian line, personally leading a
succession of bloody grenade attacks in which more than half of his force was
killed or wounded.
Blackburn stepped forward to serve again in 1940. Commanding a Machine Gun
Battalion in Syria the following year, he accepted the surrender of the Vichy
forces in Damascus. Then, rushing back to meet the Japanese thrust, he adroitly
commanded a scratch bridge in Java before being forced into submission by a
vastly superior force. He was again decorated for the example he set the ranks
in the Japanese prisoner of war camps.
This, the first Blackburn biography, details the famous battles that shaped
Australia - the Gallipoli landing, Lone Pine, Pozieres and Mouquet Farm - plus
the unfairly marginalised conflicts in Syria and Java. It tells Blackburn's
story through the eyes of his comrades, including many from his battalion who
survived the horror of the Burma Railway, and includes photographs taken by
Blackburn never published before.
Contents:
Preface
Timeline
1. Canon's Son
2. Number
3. Fat Lambs For Export
4. Last Days of Innocence
5. Go Like Hell for Third Ridge
6. Gallipoli
7. Breakup, Breakdown
8. Pozieres - Blackburn's Battlefield
9. Blackburn, VC
10. Still Serving
11. Blackburn MP
12. On the Waterfront
13. Coroner
14. A Tolerant Man
15. Regimental Commander
16. Affectionately Known by all Ranks as Blackie
17. Another Voyage
18. Why Syria?
19. On the Road to Damascus
20. Murder at Merdjayoun ...Dastardly Deeds at Damour
21. Pride Comes Before the Fall
22. Our Outlook was Pretty Grim
23. Desperate and Stupid Things
24. No Japanese Landing on Java
25. No Greece of Crete
26. Black Farce
27. No Decent Civilised Concept
28. The Bicycle Camp
29. Dunlop Shall Remain in Command
30. Taiwan
31. Utter Black Despondency
32. Mukden
33. It Was the Men Who Had a Bad Time
34. Let Your Deeds be Worthy of Them
35. I Feel as Though my Father has Just Died
36. Legacy
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
