Author(s): A B FEUER

Military

In the jungle islands of the southwest Pacific, Australia's elite M/Z commando teams conducted daring rescue, sabotage, and intelligence missions during World War II. While M Unit secretly set up coast-watching posts to monitor Japanese shipping movements and bombing flights, operatives of Z Unit were inserted deep behind enemy lines, where they attacked Japanese targets in brutal terrain and where capture meant death by beheading. Theirs was a lonely war, but Australian commandos made crucial contributions to Allied victory in the Pacific.