Description

Title: Unsung Ordinary Men – A Generation Like No Other

Author: Dingo, Sally

Condition: Near Mint

Edition: 1st Edition

Publication Date: 2010

ISBN: 9780733625244

Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 384 pages

Comments: An extraordinary, unique and potentially prize-winning book from bestselling author Sally Dingo.

UNSUNG ORDINARY MEN by Sally Dingo is a very personal investigation into the ongoing effects of war on the soldiers, their wives and children when a soldier came home. UNSUNG ORDINARY MEN was inspired by Sally s own experiences when her father returned from World War II. Sally’s father died when she was 12 years old. Through the pages of this book Sally Dingo will give a voice to the sorrow she and many others still feel, for they were not aware of what their fathers and brothers and husbands (as well as the brave women who were POW nurses) had to go through.

She will also tell the story of those forgotten, quiet men. What I am trying to pen is, in the end after all the heartache of the war really a love letter to a generation. For they were incredible, and inspiring, and we the children did not understand for so long. And soon they will be gone, and we have not said thank you. They sacrificed then watched as we took all the spoils, in the decades that followed. Max Butler, Sally s father, was a member of the 2/40th, a battalion of men sacrificed; a battalion one historian called the Doomed Battalion .

They were volunteers from the bottom of the world, mostly Tasmanian, some Victorian, almost 900 men; sons, mostly all, of World War I veterans, sons who were never given a fighting chance when they were effectively abandoned on Timor, from the blocks of wood many were given to train with in Australia courtesy of the unprepared authorities, on the assumption these weighed the same as mortar guns to the few rifles and old, old Lewis guns; the insufficient submachine guns and precious little ammunition available to them in action; to the Australian military s underestimation of Japanese capabilities and might; to Churchill s determination to chew through the Australian troops, having decided that Australia s first duty lay in the defence, not of Australia, but of Burma all for Britain.

About the Author

Sally Dingo is the author of the runaway bestseller DINGO: THE STORY OF OUR MOB (pre Bookscan but estimated at 70,000 plus).
Sally was born in Latrobe, Tasmania in 1953. After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics and history at the University of Tasmania, she left the Apple Isle to see if life really was different on the mainland . After a variety of jobs, including waitressing at the Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant in Melbourne, youth worker and proofreader s assistant at the Age, she stumbled into the world of television, working first in promotions, then in sales, before transferring to TCN 9 in Sydney and on to radio at 2Day FM. However, an urge to write saw her back at study, obtaining a Diploma of Journalism at Sydney s Macleay Colleage, after which she worked for an insurance company and doing freelance work. All of which was put on hold with the arrival of children.
Sally lives in Melbourne with her husband, Ernie, and their two children, Wilara and Jurra.