By the end of World War I, 45,000 Australians had died on the Western Front. Some bodies had been hastily buried mid-battle in massed graves; others were mutilated beyond recognition. Often men were simply listed as 'Missing in Action' because nobody knew for sure. Lieutenant Robert Burns was one of the missing, and now that the guns had fallen silent his father wanted to know what had become of his son. He wasn't the only one looking for answers. A loud clamour arose from Australia for information and the need for the dead to be buried respectfully. Many of the Australians charged with the grisly task of finding and reburying the dead were deeply flawed. Each had his own reasons for preferring to remain in France instead of returning home. In the end there was a great scandal, with allegations of 'body hoaxing' and gross misappropriation of money and army possessions leading to two highly secretive inquiries. Untold until now, Missing in Action is the compelling and unexpected story of those dark days and darker deeds and a father's desperate search for his son's remains.

March 1942. Singapore is about to fall. In Java, a Dutch civilian pilot and an Australian military dispatch rider embark on a frightening escape from the advancing Japanese that takes them from Bandung to a crash landing just north of Darwin. Both would join a unique band of flyers determined to strike back at the enemy. This is the extraordinary and little known story of more than 100 Dutch airmen stranded in Australia with no country to return to who were joined by a contingent of Australians to make up the RAAF's No. 18 (Netherlands East Indies Squadron). Formed in Canberra in April 1942, the squadron flew operational coastal patrols before eventually being relocated to the secret MacDonald Airfield, north of Pine Creek in the Northern Territory and then Batchelor near Darwin. Told fully for the first time, this is, however, more than a story about the 900 bombing raids, reconnaissance missions and attacks on Japanese shipping that the squadron flew in its three years of existence under Australian control. At its heart, is a powerful and compelling story of a group of very different men thrown together for a common purpose and the strange and sometimes difficult friendships they formed.