Description
Title: Supplement to Purple and Blue The History of the 2/10th Battalion AIF
Author: Allchin, Frank
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1993
ISBN: N/A
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 89 pages
Comments: The supplement to the unit history of the 2/10th Battalion.
Formed at Woodside, South Australia in October 1939; the Battalion had served as part of an anti-invasion force in the UK in the dark days of 1940. It was meant to support the British Expeditionary Force in France but reached the UK just after Dunkirk. As part of the 18th Brigade of the renowned 7th Division (The Silent Seventh) it moved to the Middle East, where in 1941, it played a significant part in stopping the German under Field Marshall Rommel holding Tobruk. Then followed service until early 1942, on the Syrian-Turkish border, where another German attack threatened.
The Battalion then returned to Australia after Japan entered the war; and so our country was at risk. After brief home leave and moves to Tenterfield and Kilcoy, in August 1942 it moved to Milne Bay, in Papua. With its’ sister Battalions the 2/9th and 2/12th, they stopped the Japanese for the first time on land as the Japanese tried to take Milne Bay air base. The end of 1942 and early 1943 saw the Battalion help defeat the Japanese at Buna and Sanananda; but at great cost 113 men killed and 205 wounded.
After returning to the Atherton Tablelands in Australia for rest and reinforcement, the Battalion went back to Papua New Guinea for the battle in the Ramu Valley in 1944. Its final commitment was “Oboe 2” – the landing at Balikpapan in Borneo, in 1945. The 2/10th Battalion AIF was disbanded on the 29th of December 1945, at the scene of their final action, in Balikpapan.
