Secret & Special

With special guest:

• Dr Will Davies
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Will Davies has been on the program before, bringing us inside stories from The Great War.

Today we get to discuss Will’s new book Secret and Special. We hear about a boys’ own adventure story that started at a beautiful part of Sydney and which took our adventurers on a dangerous trip to Singapore harbour. They were on a night mission to put limpet mines on some ships in port. The unsuspecting Japanese occupiers of Singapore never knew what hit them.

The difference from most adventure stories is that this is all true and draws on the meticulous research of Dr Davies that we have come to expect.

As with all Will’s books we get an overview of the history of the topic to get the context. So Will tells us the history of “special forces” going back to the Persian wars of 550 BCE.

In today’s world we are all familiar with the SAS and their exploits but Special Forces were not always regarded favourably at the beginning of World War II. There was a suspicion that resources could have been deployed elsewhere for better results.

Unfortunately the situation in Australia in 1942 was that the traditional defence arms of Navy, Air and Army were being overwhelmed by the advancing Japanese in the Asian peninsula, and fast. This was when value was seen in a clandestine force that could strike the enemy secretly and silently.

And so we hear from Will how the idea came to be accepted of establishing a group which came to be known as Z Special Unit. Once support was obtained there followed solid training of an elite group of soldiers before these heroes embarked on their dangerous voyage.

It has not been easy for Will to get the real story because much of the material he draws on was kept from researchers on security grounds for over thirty years. Now finally we get to hear the real stories and our admiration grows for what became the most successful undercover operation in history.

Dr Will Davies

Dr Will Davies is an historian, writer and filmmaker who began working with Film Australia (Commonwealth Film Unit) following his graduation from the ANU. After a stint abroad where he worked at the BBC, he worked freelance in the emerging Australian film industry including stints on a number of feature films including Phar Lap, Monkey Grip and Hostage. In 1983 he produced his first television documentary and for the next thirty years, produced a broad range of documentaries, corporate films and educational programmes, mainly for the ABC and SBS, but also for Australian commercial channels and overseas broadcasters.

Will’s latest books are The Last 100 Days and The Forgotten: the Chinese Labour Corps and the Chinese Anzacs in the Great War.

He is a former member of the NSW Anzac Council and leads battlefield tours to the Western Front. In 2018 Will was awarded a PhD from the ANU and among other projects, is working to build a war memorial school in the French village of Pozieres.

Song selection by our guest: Lili Marlene by Marlene Dietrich

Podcast (mp3)