What I'm reading

Tobruk by Peter FitzSimons
Nancy Wake by Peter FitzSimons

Ask most Australians to name a military engagement which involved Australians and they will almost certainly say Gallipoli.
Ask again and they will probably mention Kokoda.
After that things get a little hazy.

Like most, I know that Tobruk saw fierce battles in WII and that Australians were involved, but little more than that.

Peter FitzSimons sets out to dispel the ignorance surrounding Tobruk and bring to public attention the men who fought there, those diggers known as the Rats of Tobruk.
Tobruk was a vital harbour port in North Africa. Rommel, at the head of his much vaunted and undefeated Afrika Korps, believed that he could take the city in 2 days. The Australians, along with British and Indians were asked to hold out for two weeks. They held on for eight months, against the might of the German panzer armies and Luftwafe.

This book is a page turner in the best sense. It reads more like a novel than a history and draws wonderful portraits of Australians in the battle and at home, Germans, Poles and British.
FitzSimons deep admiration for these men is obvious. He makes use of the vernacular and if the battle scenes sometimes read like something from Battle Action, the effect on the men who fought and their humanity is not forgotten.

I recommend this book to anybody with a love of history or just a good story.

Nancy Wake was born in New Zealand in 1912, her family moving to Sydney when she was two. She was a free spiritied young woman who paid little heed to convention and left for adventures in New York, London and Paris when she was 18. She became a journalist based in France, where she lived a part girl existence, before meeting and marrying Henri Fiocca. When the war came, Nancy and Henri helped to operate an escape line for Allied service men, Jewish and other refugees. With the Gestapo closing in, Nancy had to use the line herself to escape to London.
There she was recruited to the SOE and sent back to France where she lived and fought with the Resistance. She is highly decorated.

FitzSimons draws a portrait of an amazing woman, unorthodox, passionate and a fierce scourge of the Nazis.

Again, I highly recommend this book.