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Of all the Australians who fought in the Second World War, none saw
more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the
crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth. Most were young--many were still
teenagers--from cities and towns, villages and farms across the
nation. In three tumultuous years they did battle with the forces
of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vichy French, and, finally, the
Imperial Japanese Navy. They were nearly lost in a hurricane in the
Atlantic. In the Mediterranean in 1941 they were bombed by the
Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force for months on end until,
ultimately, during the disastrous evacuation of the Australian army
from Crete, their ship took a direct hit and thirteen men were
killed. After the fall of Singapore in 1942, HMAS Perth was hurled
into the forlorn campaign to stem the Japanese advance towards
Australia. Off the coast of Java in March that year she met an
overwhelming enemy naval force. Firing until her ammunition
literally ran out, she was sunk with the loss of 353 of her crew,
including her much-loved captain and the Royal Australian Navy's
finest fighting sailor, 'Hardover' Hec Waller. Another 328 men were
taken into Japanese captivity, most to become slave labourers in
the infinite hell of the Burma-Thai railway. Many died there,
victims of unspeakable atrocity. Only 218 men, less than a third of
her crew, survived to return home at war's end. "Cruiser," by
journalist and broadcaster Mike Carlton, is their story. And the
story of those who loved them and waited for them.
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