Description
Title: Rough Infantry: Tales of 2/5th Australian Infantry Battalion in World War 2
Author: Bennett, Cam
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1985
ISBN: 0949759058
Cover: Hard Cover with Dust Jacket – 206 pages
Comments: The story of the soldiers of the 2/5th Battalion from 1939 to 1945.
This book is the story of the happenings of men who lived and laughed and fought in the 2nd/5th Infantry Battalion in World War 2. Most army units were formed early in the war from men of a particular locality, and the lifestyle of that place was reflected in each unit for the entire war. When it came to soldiering the men in our unit were initially almost all complete amateurs. Other units were in the same predicament. Later in the war, to our astonishment we found that we were a bit more professional in our approach. However, we were always saved from rigid formality by some of our more eccentric individuals. A certain amount of dash, the feeling that it couldn’t happen to me and the support of our whole rather cranky ‘family’ sustained us and made miracles happen. It was an extraordinary experience to belong to such a great unit.
Cam Bennett was working on a sheep station when World War 2 broke out and he joined the 2/5Australian Infantry Battalion in November 1939 as a private. He was born in 1915 in Orange and was twenty four when he enlisted. His father, a farmer, had moved about a bit but the family was basically from Hamilton in Victoria. He finished his rather scrappy education at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School. After the war, he was a station manager for four years and then ran a Soldier Settlement block near Balmoral in Western Victoria, where he was once fourteenth in the local C Grade Golf Championship. He has a married daughter living in Canberra and is now retired, living at Point Lonsdale.
Previous owner’s name on front end paper else a very good copy.
