St John's Cathedral, Brisbane and the Anzac Legend

The Australians bore the brunt of the land fighting in Papua and New Guinea, supported by the Americans (see section 9) while US forces took the lead in the Coral Sea and the Philippines, supported by Australian units. By 1945, writes Roland Perry:

“They liked a bet, a beer and a smoke, and to look after their mates and subordinates. Invariably, the comment describing each one, even before they produced these acts of controlled madness, was: ‘You’d like to be in the trenches with him’.”

Opposite page: The United States and Australia as Allies: Corporal Leslie ‘Bull’ Allen, a stretcher-bearer from the Australian 2/5th Battalion, carries a wounded American soldier to safety near Salamaua in New Guinea on 30 July 1943.

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“All through the Pacific theatre on any given day, Australians were going beyond the normal brave limits of soldering to give their units, battalions, brigades, divisions and corps the edge. And they would die doing it, often in acts of sacrifice that would save scores of diggers’ lives and liberate many others. They played the odds with as much fervour and endeavour as they would when betting on a horse at the races. More often than not, they were ordinary, laconic diggers, not blustering bruisers.

1945 also saw the defeat of Japan by Allied forces, but only after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to finally break Japan’s refusal to surrender. Australia’s most senior soldier, General Sir Thomas Blamey, signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on behalf of Australia on the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. Blamey later personally accepted the local Japanese surrender at Morotai in the Dutch East Indies on 9 September.

Aircraft carrier USS Wasp sinks with the loss of 193 American sailors after being hit by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine in September 1942. The carrier was taking part in the campaign against the Japanese at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, an offensive eventually won by Allied forces.

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