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Rescue at 2100 Hours – mass market paperback out now!

Penguin Australia has just published the mass market (or b-format sized) edition of Rescue at 2100 Hours and it includes a map. Available where all books are sold! Here’s the link to Penguin’s site – http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780143572107/rescue-2100-hours

 

West Australian Article – Sub Staged airmen’s great escape

THE West Australian ran this piece in their Saturday paper ahead of the release of the B Format (mass market edition) of Rescue at 2100 Hours. Out in all book stores September, 2014.

 

Here’s the text —

In addition to the centenary of Anzac, 25 April 2015 will mark the anniversary of another significant day in Australian military history.

On that day in 1942, an American submarine nosed its way into Fremantle Harbour, completing what many regard as the most daring escape of the Pacific War.

The submarine was bringing home 31 RAAF personnel, plucked off the coast of Japanese-occupied Timor after being trapped for two months.

On board the submarine were two Perth locals, 21-year old pilot Viv Leithhead and 19-year old wireless operator George Ettridge.

The group had been charged with keeping an aerodrome in Dutch Timor operational ahead of a huge Japanese invasion force.

Plans to evacuate the airmen were thwarted when the aircraft designated to collect them were destroyed in the Darwin raids on February 19.

As destroyers shelled the aerodrome and Japanese marines landed on Timor’s southern coast, the airmen were forced into the mountainous interior.

With the aid of a 180-kilogram radio transceiver they managed to organise a flying boat rescue off the remote northwest coast on March 3.

The date of the planned rescue coincided with the devastating raid on Broome.

The Empire flying boat slated to collect the men was among 15 flying boats destroyed in the attack.

The group eventually received the signal: “Broome raided. All flying boats destroyed. No hope possible for rescue.”

The group had very limited supplies – a handful of aspirin and quinine and a haversack of tinned food.

Four men would die, three from malaria and one from snakebite.

Two 300-strong Japanese patrols were dispatched to their position after a Timorese chief betrayed the stranded party’s location to the occupying force.

Finally, when all hope was lost – on the very day the group’s 24-year old leader, Flight Lieutenant Bryan Rofe, wrote that “eight men were at the brink of death through starvation” – an unlikely signal was received.

The USS Searaven sent the signal and it read: “Do you have a way of shining a light out to sea.”

Operating out of the submarine base in Fremantle, Searaven had been on a mission to supply Corregidor with 50 tonnes of anti-aircraft ammunition.

The mission was aborted en route following the news that the Philippines had fallen.

Searaven was redeployed to collect the airmen.

Many factors militated against the successful rescue of the trapped airmen.

The skies above the rendezvous point were streaked with reconnaissance planes while Japanese soldiers patrolled the beaches.

The location of the airmen was only 30 kilometres north of Kupang Bay, a significant Japanese naval base comprising light cruisers, destroyers and transports.

Given the number of enemy ships in the area, Searaven would surface at night adjacent to the rendezvous point.

Once in place, a 16-foot wooden boat held in the submarine’s superstructure was launched.

The plan was simple: three men would row the boat to the shore, pick up the airmen, and then row back to the submarine.

The problem was the surf. On the night of the rescue it was running at 15 feet.

To avoid capsizing, the boat would have to anchor beyond the surf while a submariner swam ashore with a rope attached to his wrist.

The rope would be anchored in the sand, enabling the malaria-stricken airmen to pull themselves through the surf.

Ensign George Cook volunteered to swim ashore.

As he prepared to leap out of the boat, something disturbed the surface of the water.

Cook shone a torch into the sea and counted three six-metre long sharks swimming beneath the boat.

He jumped in all the same.

It was the first of seven trips he would make from the boat to the beach to assist the sick airmen, earning Cook the Navy Cross, the US Navy’s highest decoration.

The airmen were loaded into the Searaven and a course was set for Fremantle.

In one final twist, a fire broke out in the submarine’s forward torpedo room a day from Fremantle.

The fire was extinguished, but the submarine’s engines were destroyed, requiring her to be towed into port.

Searaven docked in the submarine base on the morning of 25 April 1942 and the airmen were taken directly to Perth’s Hollywood Hospital.

All of them were dangerously underweight, one man going from 92 kilograms to 38 kilograms in two months.

Over the ensuing weeks and months, they were all nursed back to health.

Like the rest of the group, George Ettridge would return to active duty, serving on the islands to Australia’s near north until the war’s end.

Viv Leitthead was the only man not to survive the war, his Beaufighter crashing near the Aru Islands in August 1943.

All the airmen would suffer malarial attacks and nightmarish flashbacks

It serves as a reminder that the suffering they endured was not confined to their period of entrapment on Timor, but would last a lifetime.

Ian Busst: A Mad Bugger Went to War

My piece in the Sydney Morning Herald –

http://www.smh.com.au/national/ian-busst-a-mad-buggers-war-20140805-100hl9.html

Books that changed me

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age ran this little piece today.

 

 

Here’s the full article —

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/books-that-changed-me-tom-trumble-20140728-zwxi7.html

The Searaven Story

For anyone interested in the American element to my book, Rescue at 2100 Hours, then have a look at this video –

The “Silent Service”, a television series in the late 50s, dramatised scores of submarine stories to emerge out of World War II. The Searaven Story focuses on the rescue of 29 Australian airmen who were trapped on Japanese-occupied Timor for 58 days. My grandfather, Flight Lieutenant Bryan Rofe, was the officer in charge of the group.

The real rescue was, in fact, more dramatic than is represented here. Over two nights, the malaria-stricken airmen were forced to swim through a 16-foot surf in the dead of night through shark-infested waters. They were aided by three exceptionally brave American submariners. One of those men, Ensign George Cook, would be awarded the Navy Cross, the highest decoration in the United Staves Navy.

 

Tomorrow We Escape

On a November morning in 1943, escaped Australian POW Ian Busst comes within a day’s march of Allied lines after journeying hundreds of miles on foot through war-torn Italy. The young man is starving and hypothermic, and the German 10th Army stands between him and freedom.

 

Years later, 95-year-old Busst – the unlikely survivor – can still recall his wartime experiences in the Royal Australian Engineers in incredible detail, from the sound of a strafing Messerschmitt to the appalling vision of his two mates blown apart by a high-calibre bomb. Busst’s odyssey took him through the dark days of the Battle of Britain and fighting in the Western Desert. Captured near Tobruk during a daring night mission ahead of the German advance into Libya, he was sent to the prison camps of Italy and eventually to the dreaded Campo 57. Subjected to appalling conditions, Busst – known as ‘Mad Bugger’ – became obsessed with one objective: escape.

 

This is a thriller set amid the great battlefields and prison camps of the Second World War. Tom Trumble brings to life one man’s extraordinary story of high adventure, courage, resilience and, above all, mateship.

 

Rescue at 2100 Hours

 

February 1942. The Japanese invasion of Timor has begun and attempts to evacuate a group of 29 Australian airmen, charged with keeping an airfield operational until the last moment, are thwarted.

Under the leadership of Bryan Rofe, a 24-year-old meteorological officer, the airmen make for remote jungle along the northwest coast. All attempts to rescue the group fail. Malaria-ravaged and starving, these men are taken to the limits of their endurance for 58 days. When a 300-strong Japanese patrol is sent to hunt them down all hope seems lost, until they receive a strange signal from sea – an American submarine has been dispatched to their position. With the Japanese closing in, only courage will keep them alive.

Using diaries of the airmen and wartime records, Rofe’s grandson Tom Trumble brings to life one of the greatest stories of survival and escape of the Second World War. From the young man who stepped up to bring his men home and the Japanese soldier sent to hunt down the Australians, to the American submarine captain and the Timorese fisherman who saved them, this is an insight into the extraordinary things that happen to ordinary men in war.

Unholy Pilgrims

Sometimes the slow road can be the fastest way to sort things out

 

Relationship-challenged, with the résumé of a vagrant, Tom Trumble is at one of life’s crossroads. So he takes up an offer to go on a seriously long walk – the ancient Christian pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the domain of the devout.

 

Despite his good intentions, Tom’s route takes him into every bar along the way while crossing paths with the loopy and the wise, the pious and the distinctly ungodly. He finds himself contending with song-happy evangelists, unlikely scholars and enlightened globetrotters, and randy backpackers out to bed every pilgrim they meet. Not to mention his own very restless demons, some of which lead him to confront troubles he thought he’d left at home.

 

Unholy Pilgrims is an irreverent and engaging take on figuring out what the hell to do with your life.

 

Tomorrow We Escape – Book Trailer

Since the publication of my latest character-driven military history, “Tomorrow We Escape”, I’ve put together a little book trailer.

The book is available where all good books are sold!