An Australian Band of Brothers Don Company, Second 43rd Battalion, 9th Division

This riveting book follows a small group of Australian front-line soldiers from their enlistment in the dark days of 1940 to the end of World War II. No ordinary soldiers, they were members of Don Company of the Second 43rd Battalion, part of the famous 9th Australian Division, which sustained more casualties and won more medals than any other Australian division. Inspired by American historian Stephen Ambrose’s landmark book, Band of Brothers, about the US Army’s Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, Mark Johnston, one of our best military historians, here gives an Australian company the same treatment. His book is a unique and powerful account of the everyday experiences of a small unit of Australian soldiers on the front line.

Dr Mark Johnston is Head of the History Department at Scotch College, Melbourne, Victoria. Mark Johnston is one of this country’s leading experts on the Australian Army in World War II. He was described in the Australian War Memorial’s Wartime magazine as "the leading historian on the experience of Australian soldiers during the war." This book, his eleventh, goes to the heart of that wartime experience.