Description
Title: How Australia Took German New Guinea. An Illustrated Record
Author: Burnell, Frederick Spencer
Condition: Very Good +
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1914
ISBN: N/A
Cover: Hard Cover without Dust Jacket – 34 pages
Comments: The brief pictorial history of the Naval Expeditionary Force New Guinea, 1914. This copy has had a hard cover added to it (original soft cover intact).
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) was a small volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless stations in German New Guinea in the south-west Pacific.
Britain required the German wireless installations to be destroyed because they were used by the German East Asian Cruiser Squadron of Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee which threatened merchant shipping in the region. Following the capture of German possessions in the region, the AN&MEF provided occupation forces for the duration of the war. New Zealand provided a similar force for the occupation of German Samoa.