Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity 1941-1945 (1988, 1990) By Joan Beaumont
 
Gull Force tells the tragic story that lies behind the major Australian film, Blood Oath. it is the story of the Australians taken prisoner by the Japanese on the island of Ambon in 1942. In the three and a half years that followed they endured starvation and executions.
 
When the war ended, less than 30 percent of the force was still alive. Its death rate was almost double that of Australians on the Burma-Thailand railway at its worst. Joan Beaumont tells the full story of this disaster. Through documentary material and interviews with survivors, she describes their reactions to the bitter experience of captivity: the constant battle to find food and medicines, the tensions that developed amongst the Australians as their death rate rose, the problems of leadership encountered by the Australian officer, especially the controversial commanding officer Lt Colonel John Scott.
 
Did the men of Gull Force display in captivity those qualities which are supposed to be typical of the Australian digger? Did mateship survive the stresses of captivity, how egalitarian were the Australians when equality could mean the difference between life and death? What did some survive when so many others died?
 
Soft Cover
270 pages
In Good Condition