Joan Beaumont
Gull Force: Australian POWs on Ambon and Hainan, 1941–45
NewSouth Books, 2025
The members of the Australian battalion of Gull Force endured some of the harshest prisoner-of-war conditions of any Australian during the Second World War.
In February 1942, on the remote island of Ambon in Indonesia, 1131 Australian soldiers were preparing for invasion by Japanese forces. Outnumbered and ill-equipped, theirs was an impossible mission. After their defeat, over 200 Australians were massacred. The survivors faced three-and-a-half years of harsh work, beatings, disease and starvation on Ambon and the Chinese island of Hainan. Along with the brutal conditions came a crisis of leadership, with Australian officers accused of devising their own systems of punishment and handing men over to the Japanese. The prisoners on Ambon were tormented by two catastrophic raids by ‘friendly’ Allied air forces. Over 800 survived to endure years of captivity; only 302 returned home.
Acclaimed historian Joan Beaumont tells the full story of this tragedy and its aftermath. A powerful account of suffering, death, endurance and memory, the story of Gull Force is one that must not be forgotten.
“Revealing afresh an episode in Australia’s POW history that deserves to be better known and understood.”
Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War
The Australian experience of war in all its complexity - from the home front as well as the battlefront - as the men and women who experienced it chose to understand and remember it.
Allen & Unwin, 2013
The Great War is, for many Australians, the event that defined our nation. The larrikin diggers, trench warfare, and the landing at Gallipoli have become the stuff of the Anzac 'legend'. But it was also a war fought by the families at home. Their resilience in the face of hardship, their stoic acceptance of enormous casualty lists and their belief that their cause was just made the war effort possible.
Broken Nation is the first book to bring together all the dimensions of World War I. Combining deep scholarship with powerful storytelling, Joan Beaumont brings the war years to life: from the well-known battles at Gallipoli, Pozieres, Fromelles and Villers-Bretonneux, to the lesser known battles in Europe and the Middle East; from the ferocious debates over conscription to the disillusioning Paris peace conference and the devastating 'Spanish' flu the soldiers brought home. We witness the fear and courage of tens of thousands of soldiers, grapple with the strategic nightmares confronting the commanders, and come to understand the impact on Australians at home, and at the front, of death on an unprecedented scale.
Winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History 2014
Winner of the NSW Premier's History Awards, Australian History Prize 2014
Winner of the Queensland Literary Awards, History Award 2014
Winner, Australian Society of Authors, Asher Award, 2015, AU
Short-listed, West Australian Premier's Book Awards, Non-fiction Prize, 2014, AU
Short-listed, Council for the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Book Prize AU
About the Author
Joan Beaumont is Professor Emerita at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. She is one of Australia’s pre-eminent scholars on Australian prisoners of war and is the author of Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War, the critically acclaimed account of Australia’s experience of the First World War, which was joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History and winner of the NSW Premier’s Prize for Australian History. She is also the author of Australia’s Great Depression: How a Nation Shattered by the Great War Survived the Worst Economic Crisis It Has Ever Faced and co-editor with Allison Cadzow of Serving Our Country: Indigenous Australians, War, Defence and Citizenship.
