Description
Title: Desert Sands Jungle Lands – A biography of Major General Ken Eather
Author: Eather, Steve
Condition: Near Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2003
ISBN: 1741141826
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 236 pages
Comments: The biography of Major General Kenneth William Eather CB, CBE, DSO, ED.
Major General Kenneth William Eather CB, CBE, DSO, ED (6 July 1901 – 9 May 1993) was an Australian soldier who served during World War II, rising to the rank of major general. Eather led a battalion in the Battle of Bardia, a brigade on the Kokoda Track campaign and a division in the New Britain campaign. He was the last Australian officer to be promoted to the rank of major general during World War II, and when he died in 1993, he was Australia’s last surviving general of that war.
Kenneth William Eather was born in Sydney, New South Wales on 6 July 1901, the eldest and only son and the first of three children of William Eather, a property manager, and his wife Isabella Theresa née Lees. William managed a plantation in Papua for a time and as a boy Ken lived in Port Moresby. Ken was educated at Abbotsholme College in Wahroonga, New South Wales, am elite boarding school that also attended by future prime ministers Harold Holt and William McMahon. While at school he served in the Australian Army Cadets, in which he was commissioned in 1919. He left school at the age of 14 and became a dental mechanic, establishing a successful private practice. In 1923 he married Adeline Mabel Lewis. Their marriage produced two children: a daughter, Elsie Isobel, and a son, who was also named Ken.
