Soldiers and Aliens: Men in the Australian Army's Employment Companies during World War II

Four thousand Australian soldiers in World War II who signed up for service were never to fire a weapon. Their work was essential for the war effort, but they were 'aliens'—non-British subjects—many born in other countries. Scholars and peasants, musicians and factory workers, communists and royalists, Jews and Catholics, animists and atheists, they all laboured under standard strict Army regulations, living in tents and huts, loading and unloading trains, working the wharves, cutting timbe...