This volume concludes the Army Series. It describes the Australian Army campaigns in the last months of 1944 and in 1945. It tells the full story of the fighting in Bougainville, New Britain, round Wewak, at Balikpapan and Tarakan and in British Borneo.

In March 1945 British Major Tom Harrisson and 42 Australian, New Zealand and British guerrillas dropped behind enemy lines in Borneo in an operation designed to assist the Australian Imperial Force’s (AIF) landings on the island, the largest amphibious operation in Australia’s history. In a matter of months the guerrillas moved well beyond their initial intelligence gathering mission, disrupting enemy supply lines, mounting raids on Japanese outposts, ambushing and often beheading, Japanese soldiers in the jungle. By the War’s end they had killed over 1,000 enemy. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the AIF abruptly wound-up operations, leaving the Borneo tribespeople and brothers-in-arms to the fate of two roaming Japanese companies. Harrisson led a small band of guerrillas to hunt down these renegades, forcing their surrender on 30 October 1945, ten weeks after the war’s official end. Harrisson required his men to live off the land and at times, appeared oblivious to their appalling conditions. Nevertheless all 42 members of his force survived the war. But rather than revere their leader, many hated him and three wanted to kill him.

As the United States began its campaign against numerous Japanese-held islands in the Pacific, Japanese tactics required them to develop new weapons and strategies. One of the most crucial to the island assaults was a new group of amphibious gunboats that could deliver heavy fire close in to shore as American forces landed. These gunboats were also to prove important in the interdiction of inter-island barge traffic and, late in the war, the kamikaze threat. Several variations of these gunboats were developed, based on the troop carrying LCI(L). They included three conversions of the LCI(L), with various combinations of guns, rockets and mortars, and a fourth gunboat, the LCS(L), based on the same hull but designed as a weapons platform from the beginning. By the end of the war the amphibious gunboats had proven their worth.

Between the wars - Mediterranean campaign - Japanese threat - Malaya - New Guinea - Australia's role in the war - Australian armed services casualties.